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I am months behind on journaling life events, at least as far back as the beginning of April. Rather than chronological order, they're going to get posts as I have the spoons and headspace for each.
We've been house-hunting on and off for about 18 months, as D's inheritance appeared to be on the horizon only to vanish back into complications. The little house we built while an almost perfect size at the time could not stretch to properly accommodate two adults, two full time teenage residents, one semi-regular teenage visitor, two cats and D's needs as her textile art career grows. I know there are many larger families squeezed into smaller spaces, but I still don't think that should be an acceptable state of affairs.
We were originally concerned that a property meeting our needs ...
* four bedroom, two bathroom
* Enough living space to shut off a secondary living space for a studio or a 3 car garage one bay of which could be converted.
* Within about half-an-hour walk from the college
... would be hard to find, but it turned out the market is currently over-saturated with properties in this range, or be it at the very top end of our budget. One agent told us that there was currently about six months worth of stock on the market at the time. Smaller places like ours however were turning over like hot cakes (several in our neighbourhood that we had seen during the past two years). Which was a good position to be in.
Anyway, less than a week before we were due to leave on a big family trip to Australia (another post) an house that had been on the market twice before during those 18 months and that we really liked came back on the market, the same day as D's inheritance finally (and unexpectedly) dropped into her solicitor's trust account. The deadline was set for only 3 days after we would get back from Australia, so we urgently pulled together an offer and left it with the agent to be presented at deadline.
This actually lifted a lot of stress that would have otherwise have been hanging over us the entire trip.
We also came back from Australia with Covid, in no fit condition to do anything except wait for the deadline to pass. After a little back and forth, during which we did /not/ increase our offer, it was accepted and stage two, rush our /then-current/ house to market so that we could make good on the offer kicked in. We'd actually signed up with a real estate agent about 12 months prior, and she had been waiting very patiently, and in the meantime had already moved a lot of things into storage in preparation of open-homing. So we had about two weeks to finish that process and /clean/, and then two weeks before our initial deadline.
This period was also very stressful, especially for D. who despite assurances from our agent felt that she couldn't do anything in her studio while it was supposed to be being kept tidy.
Anyway, we got lucky. At deadline there were two offers, one of which was pretty rubbish and one of which was the best we could hope to get, given that our GV had dropped by 30k in the 18 months. It also had the benefit of not being conditional on yet another house selling, as the purchaser's own house had just gone unconditional.
After a nominal building inspection our sale went unconditional and we immediately went unconditional on our new property. Move-date was the 19th of June, the day before the Matariki long weekend, which gave us (me) a good shot at recovering before the next work week started.
Moving day ... did not go smoothly. Moving days never do, but if the house had been packed according to plan the only things we would have needed to do that morning would have been the last of the pantry, the last of the bedding and a final clean (surfaces / bins. Bin day was conveniently the day before). I did my (exhausted) best in the lead up, but other members of the household either locked-up at the enormity of the task or didn't understand how to contribute to anything outside their rooms (or even pack their own room...). So come moving day /too much/ still needed to be done.
We had my mother and D's friend B to help, and frankly they performed a herculean task as
* The movers called to let us know they would be 1-2 /hours/ early so we decided to get the very stacked storage unit (24m^2 floor, filled a 40m^3 truck)) loaded first. This took me away from helping at the house.
* We had an informal agreement that we would have until _5pm_ to move out. While I was at the storage unit we received notification that the new owner now wanted to move in by _3pm_ at the latest. (Their settlement came through about midday, so from that point they had the right to demand us gone at any time.)
* We'd arranged for access to the new house early (midday) so the kittens could be moved ahead of loading, which took D away from helping at the house we were leaving, but when the truck and I arrived from the storage unit shortly after that
* the truck there was still loading.
* our settlement (needed the money from our sale) hadn't made it through to the seller's solicitor yet, so other than the kittens, we couldn't actually unload anything. Stalled.
This is only one of the issues with our domino housing market, there's this liminal period between settlements where you are technically homeless. It wouldn't have been /such/ an issue if we were only trying to move one truckload of stuff, but the monthly hire on the storage unit was also due to tick over the following day and we really wanted to avoid having to pay for another month of that as well.
Anyway I got permission to at least unload my car into the garage so that I could get back to where the real work was, and /just then/ the settlement came through. I left the truck unloading and got back across town to start loading cars and cleaning. I can't for the life of me remember if made made any more trips before the end of the day, but B did several in her little car.
The moving truck arrived and got loaded - and it wasn't big enough to take everything. All the big stuff of course, but not a lot of the smaller containers. I would seriously had sworn there was more stuff in the storage unit than still in the house, but there you go. It was somewhen after _2pm_....
I tapped our neighbour, A, which I should have done earlier. (Probably should also have tried if T & S if were home as well). She took a 2?3? loads in her big car and we moved the rest of everything across the road into her garage (driveway for the potted plants). About 3:30pm the new owner's son came by to check how we were doing, by this time the cleaning had been finished (thanks again Mum) and everything remaining to be moved was in the garage of the old house so that they could start moving in through the front door if they wanted, so he said they'd be back in about 45 minutes. We still hadn't seen them by the time we were fully out at _4:30pm_ so I did get a chance to quickly go around inside (catching some windows which had been left open), say a goodbye and thank you to the house, asking it to be as good for the new owner as it had been for us before hitting the garage-door close and ducking out.
Moving /in/ was actually a lot easier. The movers had put most of the essential furniture in the correct rooms so for that night we basically had to make up the beds. Dinner of course was takeaway, a mix of fish'n'chips and pizza. Most of the essentials were unpacked over the next couple of days; the rest is still a work in progress. The rate has decreased as we've found everything we need...
We have probably an entire other house worth of older furniture still in the garage (if anyone in interested...) after combining the estate which came down from Wellington with our own and taking the best for the available space; but there are also still enough boxes and other storage vessels that there isn't the floor space to assess it properly. I'm keeping an eye on local groups for opportunities to get rid of the empties/packing material rather than just breaking them down and taking them to refuse.
~~~
Now that we've had a few weeks to settle in ... life is better. The whole estate/house-hunt/move thing is no longer hanging over us. We have enough space that people aren't constantly tripping over each other / trying to hide in their own little spaces. The background/baseline stress level has dropped.
I have an office space which is larger than the (1700mm x 1220mm L) desk and a bar stool, with a door that I can close and a window. It is a large bedroom and doubles as the guest room, so there is also a double bed, good wardrobe/storage, and still enough floor space for a comfortable chair and cattens to tear around in the open chasing toys/shadows.
The master bedroom has plenty of space for a couch making it a proper "quiet retreat" space when needed. We have an en-suite with a shower which is no worse that the one we left behind, a walk-in-wardrobe with a kitty-proof door. (Until they figure out door handles.) Both the kids have bigger bedrooms than the second bedroom in the old house. The main toilet is separate from the main bathroom.
D loves the bigger kitchen, and her new quilting studio which was previously the "media room". We've had to upgrade the lighting of course and she has also had a fixed design wall installed.
The house is about 10 years old and comes with a well established garden which we haven't had the weather + time combination to properly assess but looks pretty low maintenance beyond pruning. I'm going to be able to plant out things which have been living in pots for the better part of five years.
It remains to be seen how ongoing finances stack up. Some bills have gone up, but some have also have gone down/away. My projection is that we should be no worse off week on week.
We've been house-hunting on and off for about 18 months, as D's inheritance appeared to be on the horizon only to vanish back into complications. The little house we built while an almost perfect size at the time could not stretch to properly accommodate two adults, two full time teenage residents, one semi-regular teenage visitor, two cats and D's needs as her textile art career grows. I know there are many larger families squeezed into smaller spaces, but I still don't think that should be an acceptable state of affairs.
We were originally concerned that a property meeting our needs ...
* four bedroom, two bathroom
* Enough living space to shut off a secondary living space for a studio or a 3 car garage one bay of which could be converted.
* Within about half-an-hour walk from the college
... would be hard to find, but it turned out the market is currently over-saturated with properties in this range, or be it at the very top end of our budget. One agent told us that there was currently about six months worth of stock on the market at the time. Smaller places like ours however were turning over like hot cakes (several in our neighbourhood that we had seen during the past two years). Which was a good position to be in.
Anyway, less than a week before we were due to leave on a big family trip to Australia (another post) an house that had been on the market twice before during those 18 months and that we really liked came back on the market, the same day as D's inheritance finally (and unexpectedly) dropped into her solicitor's trust account. The deadline was set for only 3 days after we would get back from Australia, so we urgently pulled together an offer and left it with the agent to be presented at deadline.
This actually lifted a lot of stress that would have otherwise have been hanging over us the entire trip.
We also came back from Australia with Covid, in no fit condition to do anything except wait for the deadline to pass. After a little back and forth, during which we did /not/ increase our offer, it was accepted and stage two, rush our /then-current/ house to market so that we could make good on the offer kicked in. We'd actually signed up with a real estate agent about 12 months prior, and she had been waiting very patiently, and in the meantime had already moved a lot of things into storage in preparation of open-homing. So we had about two weeks to finish that process and /clean/, and then two weeks before our initial deadline.
This period was also very stressful, especially for D. who despite assurances from our agent felt that she couldn't do anything in her studio while it was supposed to be being kept tidy.
Anyway, we got lucky. At deadline there were two offers, one of which was pretty rubbish and one of which was the best we could hope to get, given that our GV had dropped by 30k in the 18 months. It also had the benefit of not being conditional on yet another house selling, as the purchaser's own house had just gone unconditional.
After a nominal building inspection our sale went unconditional and we immediately went unconditional on our new property. Move-date was the 19th of June, the day before the Matariki long weekend, which gave us (me) a good shot at recovering before the next work week started.
Moving day ... did not go smoothly. Moving days never do, but if the house had been packed according to plan the only things we would have needed to do that morning would have been the last of the pantry, the last of the bedding and a final clean (surfaces / bins. Bin day was conveniently the day before). I did my (exhausted) best in the lead up, but other members of the household either locked-up at the enormity of the task or didn't understand how to contribute to anything outside their rooms (or even pack their own room...). So come moving day /too much/ still needed to be done.
We had my mother and D's friend B to help, and frankly they performed a herculean task as
* The movers called to let us know they would be 1-2 /hours/ early so we decided to get the very stacked storage unit (24m^2 floor, filled a 40m^3 truck)) loaded first. This took me away from helping at the house.
* We had an informal agreement that we would have until _5pm_ to move out. While I was at the storage unit we received notification that the new owner now wanted to move in by _3pm_ at the latest. (Their settlement came through about midday, so from that point they had the right to demand us gone at any time.)
* We'd arranged for access to the new house early (midday) so the kittens could be moved ahead of loading, which took D away from helping at the house we were leaving, but when the truck and I arrived from the storage unit shortly after that
* the truck there was still loading.
* our settlement (needed the money from our sale) hadn't made it through to the seller's solicitor yet, so other than the kittens, we couldn't actually unload anything. Stalled.
This is only one of the issues with our domino housing market, there's this liminal period between settlements where you are technically homeless. It wouldn't have been /such/ an issue if we were only trying to move one truckload of stuff, but the monthly hire on the storage unit was also due to tick over the following day and we really wanted to avoid having to pay for another month of that as well.
Anyway I got permission to at least unload my car into the garage so that I could get back to where the real work was, and /just then/ the settlement came through. I left the truck unloading and got back across town to start loading cars and cleaning. I can't for the life of me remember if made made any more trips before the end of the day, but B did several in her little car.
The moving truck arrived and got loaded - and it wasn't big enough to take everything. All the big stuff of course, but not a lot of the smaller containers. I would seriously had sworn there was more stuff in the storage unit than still in the house, but there you go. It was somewhen after _2pm_....
I tapped our neighbour, A, which I should have done earlier. (Probably should also have tried if T & S if were home as well). She took a 2?3? loads in her big car and we moved the rest of everything across the road into her garage (driveway for the potted plants). About 3:30pm the new owner's son came by to check how we were doing, by this time the cleaning had been finished (thanks again Mum) and everything remaining to be moved was in the garage of the old house so that they could start moving in through the front door if they wanted, so he said they'd be back in about 45 minutes. We still hadn't seen them by the time we were fully out at _4:30pm_ so I did get a chance to quickly go around inside (catching some windows which had been left open), say a goodbye and thank you to the house, asking it to be as good for the new owner as it had been for us before hitting the garage-door close and ducking out.
Moving /in/ was actually a lot easier. The movers had put most of the essential furniture in the correct rooms so for that night we basically had to make up the beds. Dinner of course was takeaway, a mix of fish'n'chips and pizza. Most of the essentials were unpacked over the next couple of days; the rest is still a work in progress. The rate has decreased as we've found everything we need...
We have probably an entire other house worth of older furniture still in the garage (if anyone in interested...) after combining the estate which came down from Wellington with our own and taking the best for the available space; but there are also still enough boxes and other storage vessels that there isn't the floor space to assess it properly. I'm keeping an eye on local groups for opportunities to get rid of the empties/packing material rather than just breaking them down and taking them to refuse.
~~~
Now that we've had a few weeks to settle in ... life is better. The whole estate/house-hunt/move thing is no longer hanging over us. We have enough space that people aren't constantly tripping over each other / trying to hide in their own little spaces. The background/baseline stress level has dropped.
I have an office space which is larger than the (1700mm x 1220mm L) desk and a bar stool, with a door that I can close and a window. It is a large bedroom and doubles as the guest room, so there is also a double bed, good wardrobe/storage, and still enough floor space for a comfortable chair and cattens to tear around in the open chasing toys/shadows.
The master bedroom has plenty of space for a couch making it a proper "quiet retreat" space when needed. We have an en-suite with a shower which is no worse that the one we left behind, a walk-in-wardrobe with a kitty-proof door. (Until they figure out door handles.) Both the kids have bigger bedrooms than the second bedroom in the old house. The main toilet is separate from the main bathroom.
D loves the bigger kitchen, and her new quilting studio which was previously the "media room". We've had to upgrade the lighting of course and she has also had a fixed design wall installed.
The house is about 10 years old and comes with a well established garden which we haven't had the weather + time combination to properly assess but looks pretty low maintenance beyond pruning. I'm going to be able to plant out things which have been living in pots for the better part of five years.
It remains to be seen how ongoing finances stack up. Some bills have gone up, but some have also have gone down/away. My projection is that we should be no worse off week on week.
