Let's Get This Show on the Road
Once the sale had gone through, which is effectively immediate with an auction, we needed a solicitor. And we only had 28 days to complete the transfer of funds. Finding a solicitor who was happy to take on such a quick turn around was a struggle I left to Huw. He managed to find a local-ish one who seemed fairly lack lustre and tried to charge us for work already carried out by the seller, which we were already having to pay for as part of the sales pack.
Now, I don't like to make a fuss, and generally I don't notice being discriminated against...but I made an exception for the solicitor! Despite filling in paperwork to say that Huw and I were going 50/50 on this property I noticed that the solicitor repeatedly only emailed Huw. And it started to grate on me. He asked for proof of funds only from Huw - I mean, if these were legal checks then I needed to be checked too? And whenever emails were sent I wasn't copied into the answers or queries. After the fourth or fifth one I messaged the solicitor to protest - I am an equal partner here and deserve to be treated as such! I was experiencing the same casual sexism that Amber said she had when she was looking at houses with Mat. Anyway, matter resolved and back on track and working towards something along the lines of the cottage below - cute, huh?
The access issues were chased round and round and we got nowhere. The lane that runs through the site and provides our access is unregistered and no one seemed to know who owned it. The seller said he had owned the cottage since the 80’s and used the lane almost exclusively all that time. There had even been a padlock on the gate on one of our pre-purchase visits which turned out to be his. It's currently unregistered, so may be owned, but it did used to be the main through road once upon a time, so it may have been publicly owned highway that has never passed into private ownership. The seller thinks it is a public right of way, or bridleway, but there is nothing in the council records to suggest this. So, we are wondering whether we could maybe claim the lane for ourselves… we will look into it.
It just so happens that A, Huw's dad, is an architect and just happened to work for the same company as the guy who drew up the plans for the cottage extension back in the day. He is going to see if he can contact the architect and get a copy of the official plans so that we can see and amend them to suit - something like the below.
Anyway, as the end of the 28 days approached without resolution it was decided we would accept a ‘statement of truth’ which is apparently almost as good as legally binding, in which the seller signed to say he’s had unrestricted access for 40 years. On the final day, we had a flurry of emails to make sure we definitely wanted to go ahead with all of our current knowledge, and we definitely did - we had already transferred the final balance to the solicitor so we were ready to take the leap into this challenge, which would either be our future dream or a nightmare journey...or both.
And I've set up a spreadsheet to keep track of the cost of everything - it will be interesting to see how much this project costs by the time it is complete, and how much we can save by doing the work ourselves. We will also use it to plan the various steps of the project, the order to do them in and detail the various tasks involved. Hopefully the more organized we are the easier it will be.
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