Packing is going well

 Slowly, the dining room is filling up with boxes. Too busy to feel particularly tired, but I'm sure that will come tonight.

It's official - we are home-owners.

Just got off the phone from the lawyers in Dannevirke - the settlement has been made, and we own the house.

We're no longer renters.

We're on the property ladder.

We're home-owners.

Alex's last day at the office today

Alex finished up at her work today, and brought her laptop home. She's now officially on a six day break to help move house, and after that she'll be working remotely, and part time only. Apart from the reduced office hours, that'll also save her 5 hours a week where she won't be sitting in traffic, so all in all this should be a huge change for her. If all goes according to plan, today may have been her last day ever, in a regular office job.

The Real Estate agent did the pre-settlement check today, and gave the all-clear. Apparently the current owner has also put all the doorknobs back in to the doors, so that's an unexpected bonus that we won't have to deal with. I called the lawyer to say we're happy to go ahead with the funds transfer tomorrow (settlement day!).

We've started packing, but we're nowhere near finished yet.

Emptying rooms out...

...and stacking the boxes in the dining room.

 

Tomorrow we do as much packing as we can. Then on Saturday we're driving over there with a load of "too-fragile-to-trust-to-the-movers" stuff, and to get the key at noon. On Sunday we're back in Wellington to give the place a good cleanout, and finish packing. On Monday the moving company arrives in here to pick up our stuff, and they'll deliver everything on Tuesday. Then, on Wednesday we drive back to finish cleaning the (now empty) house, and at 11:00am the carpet cleaners turn up to shampoo the carpets, ready for the last inspection by the landlords at 2:00pm.

All in all, a busy week ahead - let's hope it all goes smoothly!

On other news, Harry messaged me today to say he'd found a really nice heatpump unit, and he managed to get a REALLY good price on it, at auction. So that's going well also!

All funds paid!

After two and a half weeks of getting everything ready, we paid the final bill today. We own a house! Well, at least, the money is in the lawyer's trust account.

We symbolically clicked the mousebutton on "transfer funds" together.

Two people who just paid for a house

Totally coincidentally, today was also the 12th anniversary of me asking Alex to marry me.

Unconditional confirmed!

Literally with less than 10 minutes of business hours to spare, the contract has gone unconditional! We have a house!

We went out for dinner at our favourite Japanese restaurant (Kazu) to celebrate.

Now the real hard work begins - organising the various contractors to perform the work, getting insurance, moving our stuff in, etc etc. Lots to do!

The Our House!

Unconditional day

Crunchtime today - if all goes well, the contract goes unconditional today. We have the reports from the builder, the plumber, and the electrician, and based on some of the issues we decided yesterday to offer them $5k less yesterday - today our lawyer called me to say it looks like they may accept that! I had expected there to be some haggling but apparently not. This isn't set in concrete yet, but it's all looking good.

Alex is working from home today, so we're having a nervously happy day here today.

Received plumber's report

The plumber's report came in tonight as well, so that's all the reports we need. Lots of detail, and I don't really know what it all means yet but we're learning fast.

Continuing from the builder's omission of the state of the fireplace in his report, it looks like the plumber couldn't get to the fireplace because it was lit (it was 7 degrees outside, so not entirely unreasonable). Very unfortunate though - I'll have to go back to Les the builder and ask him to write up his findings after all, and an approximate cost to decomission the fireplace altogether, and replace with a heatpump instead.

Received electrician's report

The electrician's report came in today, and really no surprises on that either. Some of the wiring was old, some of it had already been replaced. So just the plumber's report now.

Received builder's report

We got the builder's report today, and there were no real surprises there. One accidental ommission though, and an unfortunate one - Les the builder had forgotten to mention the state of the fireplace. However, the plumber's report will show that up in more detail, hopefully.

Builder's survey

I just got back from a trip to Dannevirke, to be present when the builder undertook his survey. Met up with Harry, Dad, and Chris as well. All in all, a good afternoon. Took a quick photo for Alex to show where the fridge goes (we couldn't remember it from the first visit).

Interesting feature - the little door panel beside the backdoor is for the old "meat fridge", where the pre-electricity colonial houses would have a small cage outside to keep the meat in to keep it cool.

There were some issues shown up by his survey but not enough to walk away, so that's positive.

The main three issues were:

1. The weatherboards need doing, and this could cost $2k or more.
2. The fireplace/flue is in dire conditions, and is basically not legal or safe in any way.
3. The piles aren't tied to the wood supports underneath the house, and this needs to be done before an earthquake rocks the house right off the concrete studs.

Number 1 we knew about, and we just wanted to know the extent of it. Bad but not as bad as it could be. Not bad enough to walk away.

Number 2 was in much worse condition than expected, and will need attention. Rather than getting it fixed though, we plan on replacing the open fire with a heat pump instead.

Number 3 was a surprise finding though, and is obvious to spot if you know what you're looking for. I did not, so I'm glad we got the report done.

We are now hoping to renegotiate the house price by a couple of thousand dollars. I've sent a letter to the lawyer to that effect - hoping to hear back today.

Meanwhile, I've asked the plumber and the electrician to go ahead and do their reports now.

First Home Grants approved

After filling in a ton of forms for Kainga Ora over the weekend, sending them more forms on Monday, and half a dozen more today, I just received confirmation that Alex & I have both been approved to receive the First Home Grant, of $5k each, so that's really excellent, especially since I was on the Second Chance grant (having briefly owned a house in the 1990's). Super exciting!

Tomorrow I drive to Dannevirke to coordinate the builder's report, and meet up with Harry, Dad, and my bother-in-law Chris.

I'll also meet up with the lawyer, and drop off some originals of documents to her.

After tomorrow it should be clear whether we want the property or not, depending on the builder's opinion of the state of the weatherboards.