11th May 2009

Its beena while since the last update but we have indeed found a house, had an offer accepted and and allowing the solicitors to work through several issues before we sign off. As soon as its ours there will be pics and more info. At this rate however it's unlikly to be ready in time for the wedding :(

5th March 2009

Well more time has passed, nearly 2 months since our offer on the first houe was accepted and things are going through the motions. As soon as any new information comes up we'll let you know. In the meantime i hope you are all enjoying low mortgage payments thanks to the new 0.5% base rate announced today!

2nd February 2009 

We got an email towards the end of Jan to inform us that the owner could not sell his house because of negative equity. With any other bank he probably would have been ok but as he was with Northern Rock they just wanted to repossess the house.

This leaves us in an odd position. On the one hand, the house will get repossessed and probably auctioned off which means we could get a bargain house to sell in a couple of years for a cracking profit to buy somewhere larger.

On the other hand we buy something elsewhere and forget all about the house. At the moment we are looking elsewhere with one eye on the situation to see what occurs. As everyone has said, something better will come out of it, and with house prices falling at a reported £100 a day I hope so! 

30th December 2008

Our offer of £174,000 was accepted on Monday evening and so we are now in the process of arranging the solicitors and the mortgage. Emma has already started picking wallpaper and furniture out and needless to say we are both very excited!

28th December 2008

Things have been moving along quickly over the last few weeks in the lead up to Christmas. We have found a proerty in Tadworth that we like and are going for our second viewing with the folks today. The house was originally listed at £235,000 5 months ago and is now reduced to £200,000. On our first viewing the owners father told us that an offer of £174,000 would be accepted!

The mortgage application will go in in the new year with the new interest rates and fingers crossed we'll have more news over the coming months.

There is a little work that we would like to do such as knocking the kitchen wall through into the living room and obviously decorating.

October 28th 2008 

When we got engaged in August 2006 we had started talking about where we might live and so on. At the time the only thought in our minds was to look for a flat. Houses were too far out of our reach and the housing market didn't look like slowing down.

Fast forward to October of 2008 and house prices are on average 10% less than just 12 months ago, the world has entered into an economic black hole and the govt. has suspended all stamp duty on houses below £175,000 until September 2009. No bank will lend more than 90% of the value of a property and so only those with a deposit can get on the ladder.

Fortunately we have been saving as much as we can and do have a deposit and because of the other changes we have also decided that instead of looking for a flat we would try and look for a house. The main reasons behind this were that with prices coming down we might just be able to afford it, if we bought a flat we wouldn’t be able to move out should price continue to fall for fear of negative equity and once we are in a house we can get on with our lives and not worry about the housing market going up or down in the short term.

Interest rates are currently at 4.5% down from 5% last month and there are calls for it to be lowered even further over the coming months to help stave off recession which can only be good for us looking to get a mortgage at a nice low rate.

In an ideal world we will get a flat and be ready to move in after we wedding, however with the state of the economy and with price still falling we are thinking about starting to look sometime in March or April by which time we hope price will have come down more as will interest rates and our deposit will have grown a little too. Lynne believes she can just about tolerate having me around all the time in the annex for a few months which will be a great help should we need it!

Ultimately we know that both sets of parents will help us out with advice and suggestions and a room to sleep in until we are sorted if needed and for that we cannot thank them enough. None of this would be possible without their love and support.