Sabrina Dent: Freelance web designer, developer and internet marketer living in Cork, Ireland with one dog and a husband in no particular order.
Get Off My Lawn
Popular wisdom would have you believe that buying a house is one of life’s most stressful events, right behind the death of a partner or divorce. Having just this afternoon bought a house, I have to say: this is one of the least stressful transactions I’ve ever been through. Seriously. Easy peasy. A snap. Eight weeks start to finish. Done and dusted.
Although I know nothing about buying houses and even less about buying houses in Ireland, I am generally very lucky in finding people to work with who make being clueless easier. At this point I can say with some authority that I still know nothing about buying houses, but we’ve become very good at writing enormous cheques and in return, someone has given us keys to a building we apparently now own. This is due mostly to the efforts of these people:
- Mortgage Broker: We fall into the “specialist borrowers” category so we needed a mortgage broker. I worked with Jonathan O’Brien at White Star Mortgages. He was awesome, very responsive, and gets points for answering after hours emails from his Blackberry. I found him through AskAboutMoney when bitching about our first mortgage broker, who sucked out loud.
- Mortgage Company: Springboard. They do broker-only loans but had the best rate available to us, so I’m doubly glad we went through our fabulous broker.
- Conveyancing Solicitor: I found Aileen Walshe when looking for flat fee conveyancing that wasn’t done by the equivalent of a conveyancing sweatshop. She’s excellent. At one point she got in her car and drove to the seller’s solicitor to pick up the contracts they continually failed to put in the post. Even our estate agent said she was great. She charges €995 plus VAT.
- Auctioneer: Speaking of estate agents, ours was Dermot Lynch at James Coughlan. He drove me around Cork all afternoon one day, and since he’s done a bunch of property renovations, he was very handy to have in tow. He’s also lovely and smells gorgeous.
The flip side of there being no moments of horrendous stress is that there’s also been no joyous moment of “woot!” so far. I suspect that this is because I’ve treated this whole thing like a very tentative and theoretical house buying exercise: if we can get our cash in place, if someone is actually dumb enough to loan us a big pile of money, if we can find a house in our budget, if they accept our offer, if the mortgage company actually draws a cheque, if it actually closes.
I was sincerely prepared for this to fall through at any given if, but as it happens, they all fell in line. John let me know he’d picked up the keys this afternoon with a text message that says “zOMG H0WCE K33Z!!” He’s also been running around yelling “Get off my lawn!” for practice. At what, I’m not sure, since we won’t actually have a lawn, but I suppose “Get off my concrete!” doesn’t have the same ring to it. He’s really digging home ownership.
Me, I’m convinced the whole building will collapse during renovations, taking at least two adjoining neighbours with it. More than that, while I may be new at this, I know one thing for sure:
It isn’t the house buying that will kill you. It’s the house moving.
11 Jul 2008
| In: Domesticities |
moving = death! No matter what, you will lose stuff. And you never find places for all the stuff.
12.07.2008, 2:14 amCongrats Sabrina. Best of luck with the renovations. Hoping everything goes swimmingly. :)
12.07.2008, 8:29 amYep congrats missus! So, will there be a house warming?
12.07.2008, 11:48 amGiven your usual schedule, will you be moving into the house under the cover of darkness?
Or is the house warming also a house moving party. Instead of bring a bottle, its bring these boxes over…
And I might be able to rustle up some turf for John is he really wants it.
13.07.2008, 9:23 pmJaysus and there was me moaning about my stresses and you have all that going on!!
So which rooms are not going to be pink ala yer mobile? Cue loads of designery room posts??
Well done to you both and it sounds like you had great ‘help’…xx
13.07.2008, 11:52 pmSince I am being maligned here for comic effect, a clarification: this will be the sixth address I’ve had since we met five and a half years ago.
I’m really quite looking forward to not moving house any more, is all.
14.07.2008, 6:02 amCongrats! Nothing better than owning your own home…we bought our first home recently aswell and we’ve loved every minute of it. Best of luck with it!
14.07.2008, 10:12 amI’m so glad sees buying a house in the same light. I guess with prices, etc. people of terrified of buying lately. I on the other hand have yet to be put off. Your story is great encouragement.
Hope the renovations go just as smoothly for you both :)
19.07.2008, 9:35 pm