WHOA!

You know that thing they say about how you shouldn’t announce something until it’s a done deal? Pregnant women do it, there’s a certain number of weeks you’re supposed to wait because you don’t want to have to explain to people if it all goes wrong. Well, I’m not a superstitious person, but I did have a little voice in my head asking whether it was a good idea to tell all my friends at a christmas party on Monday.

Now it’s Friday and the latest news is that the lender will not only not give us the amount they originally offered, the won’t give us anything now, because we’d only be able to buy the land, not build anything on it. I am struggling not to give up all hope. We can still remortgage our existing house, which luckily has doubled in value since we bought it 10 years ago (with the help of the extension we have yet to complete). Between that and the possibility that our company (which has more money than we do) could buy the land and then let us build our house on it, we think we can scrape together *most* of the money and I just need to cram in a few hours of invoicing to see whether we can make up the shortfall.

This assumes our company can buy land which we are then going to build a house on… not sure of the legality issues.

And it would leave us penniless (though keeping more of what we then proceeded to earn each month, there being less pesky mortgage to pay.)

I’m holding off on slamming the brakes on the contracts until I know for sure we can’t do this. I’ve pretty much decided that I’m happy to buy the land if we can manage it, even if it leaves us with nothing, because

  1. As long as we’ve got broadband, Elmo and I can work from a caravan and we’re happy to live that way for a few years.
  2. Elmo’s income will (touch wood) continue to be high and we can save up and build as we can.
  3. My income is negligible lately, so I am free to quit my job and work on the property full time.
  4. When we sell this house, we’ll have a little more than it was mortgaged for to show for it (hopefully).
  5. I have pretty much decided to deal with Amazonails about building the house, and Barbara was really optimistic about being able to build something reasonably cheaply with my friends’ slave labour, careful planning and a long timescale.
  6. Having a smaller mortgage would mean we actually had some money each month to put aside to save up for materials.
  7. I clearly have an overdeveloped sense of adventure. You only live once.
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