Building the house

22 January 2011
You can see that they are just starting to build the walls in the lower part of the house.

12 February 2011
You can see that it's going up with some speed! The roof is starting to take shape. All solid brick walls. Out of Persimmon and Charles Church, Redrow only seem to use sold brick.

19 February 2011
Not much change after one week. But more work to the roof and some white flashing.

26 February 2011
An awful lot has happened in the last week. The roof is finished and the windows and doors are in. I guess this is the stage where they call it 'water tight' and work can begin inside. Funny how a house looks more like a house with windows and doors. :)

12 March 2011
The scaffolding is down, the render is on and this was the day we were allowed to go in.One of the most exciting days of my life! The house seemed so much bigger than we had anticipated. Just love that plaster and wood smell of a new house. Inside will be covered in a different post.

19 March 2011
The exteriorofthe house is almost complete but the garage still needs a door! They've started to 'landscape' the garden and lay some paving slabs.

26 March 2011
The plastering is going on and so the windows are open for 'airing'.

16 April 2011
Some pictures of the weeny garden and the back of the house. And some more gratuitous pictures of the facade because I love it! :)

Sometime in 2012
We never took a final picture of the finished house. But here's one I took in 2012.

The Purchasers

It took almost a whole week for Moving Made Easy to come back to us with a price.

They came up with the price of £205,000 - which was some way off the £220,000 we thought it was worth. Therefore part exchanging the house would mean we effectively would lose £15,000. We were a little bit a down trodden and said that they could put it on the market (we had nothing to lose and could always pull out). At that stage we weren't quite sure what we were going to do because we knew it was such a bad deal for us,  but we wanted the Redrow house.

So MME put the house on the market with ALL THREE estate agents at the rock bottom price of £205,000. We had two viewings the very next day and then find out that they both had made an offer on the same day. MME decided to make it go to sealed bids.

They called me later that day with the results and they told me that the top bid was £217,000. That didn't sit very well because Moving Made Easy were only going to put £205,000 towards the house based on their offer.

You see, Moving Made Easy effectively buy the house from you in the event you can't get a buyer to enable you to move into the Redrow home. So they could profit or they got lose. So with such a high offer I asked whether we could enter into the contract directly with the buyer and they agreed. MME would still facilitate the deal with the estate agents - for example they paid for the estate agent's fees (over £3,000) and the energy efficiency test (£100).

So this was great - it looked as though the move was going to go ahead and we could then start to get a little more excited. Until the next hurdles: formal approval of our mortgage and exchange of contracts.

MME also arrange for a surveyor to come and give a full survey of your house (not just a home owner's - a full survey!). However, before he even arrived we had sold (well, had an offer) the house directly so it wasn't necessary that he come out. Obviously, this is because MME will effectively buy the house from you in the event your house is slow to sell.

I thought it was quite funny that the couple who had put the offer in on our house was on the basis of a viewing by a loan female and they put the offer in nevertheless based on that viewing. It was the following weekend (after they had already put in the offer) that they viewed together. We were quite nervous that they might change their mind. But it was all okay - he loved it. There's a girl that knows what she wants. I'm not sure that Mr Bee would have allowed me to do that, but I still couldn't believe that he allowed us to reserve the Redrow house. I guess they just go all mushy when they see we want it it so bad.

The Three Valuations

After 6 hours of cleaning the estate agents arived one after the other. I put all clutter away - it always looks so terrible in the pictures. People who are buying your house don't want to see all of your personal artifacts - they want something in which to picture their stuff. But that's not to say it was sparse. It was homely, clean and tidy.

Because our house was so close to town all of the estate agents walked to our house to conduct their valuations. Some had a different style. Walk in show themselves around and others were a little more polite. One of them happened to be a distant friend and I asked him how it worked with this third party organisation.

He said that that this company pays them and handles it all on our behalf. This made me feel a little uneasy because it was our house that we had put some much love into making only to be sold by some faceless organisation. I just needed to remember the ultimate goal - the Ruthin.

The Calling

Moving Made Easy got in contact and explained that he needed three valuers to visit and value our home.I arranged for the following Thursday and got that day off work.

We knew the house had to be pristine to get a good value. So we finished all jobs except turf to the front (but did weed) and carpet - and it was looking very nice indeed.

MME explained that they would choose three local estate agents (to the house) to value our house. They then went on to say that if we didn't like a particular estate agent then we didn't have to go with them.

We had already spoken to some estate agents to have a valuation that week to get a genuine idea of value but had not signed anything with them. Our personal estate agents suggested a price of £225,000 and to accept offers of £220,000 would be realistic.

MME chose Waterman Residential, Braxtons (specialise in the more expensive house) and Atkinson & Keene (persistent and won't stop badgering you if you are buying). The estate agent we had got was Roger Platt and MME seemed not to have gone with them.

The Reservation

There was just one thing. We already had a house and we hadn't put it on the market. Despite this, we decided to a reserve the house. It cost £1,000 and if you cancelled the reservation  you would lose £200. I think we knew that this house was worth that risk.

We also decided to go with the part-exchange scheme which seemed to be handled by a third party called 'Moving Made Easy'.

The sales lady in the site office asked us some questions in order that we complete the questionnaire. The questions were:

1. Have you got your house on the market? No.
2. What do you think the current market value of your house is? We though aroun £220,000 based on neigbouring properties.
3. When was your house built? 1979.
4. Is your mortgage subject toa redemption by the bank? No.
5. How many years have you been in occupation? 5 years.
6. What is the property type? Terrace.
7. Ex-local authority? No.
8. Number of bedrooms? Two.
9. Number of receptions? One.
10. If on the market, how long and what is the price?
11. Current lender?
12. What did you pay for the property?
13. Any alterations to the property (and planning permission granted)?
14. Freehold or leasehold?

We then had to sign the questionniare to verify that it was correct. This document did belong to Moving Made Easy - the part-exchange company.

The marketing suite lady explained that someone would call me the following Monday to arrange for three valuations.

With that, we left feeling extremely excited, but a little despondent regarding the mixture of emotions - wanting the house and having a house to sell. It was that feeling where you want to be excited but you know you can't get your hopes up, but you never succeed. Nothing can overcome hope.

When we got home we focused on getting our little house into a saleable state. We'd already done a lot of work to it but there were a few things we just hadn't got round to doing. This included fitting a bespoke bath panel, bathroom light and lots of bleach! I felt quite dizzy at the end of it. It's always the way that you tend get the house just where you want it just as you sell.

Falling in Love

The location was perfect. More than 3 quarters of the space actually consisted of open space and wooded areas. You couldn't really hear the nearby motorway (which was conveniently located for work).

We looked around the other Redrow show homes and were really impressed. The real signs of quality were:

• the style of the houses (old fashioned on the outside and new on the inside);
• the door handles (very modern without having to pay more);
• the paintwork (matt and not gloss);
• the bathroom taps and showers (modern and integrated);
• the front door (the muted the Farrow & Ball style colours);
• the staircase (waxed ash hand rail);
• the windows and french doors (perfectly in keeping;
• the brickwork (not wood frames - solid house); and
• the downlighters as standard in the kitchen (not in the bathroom though!).

We couldn't physically view the house we were interested in but we could the floor plan, site plan and pictures. Redrow provided a video tour online. The house we now wanted was the last one of its style with a garage. If we wanted it, we needed to act fast...

The Great Seduction

It was gruelling, but I finally used all of my womanly devices (i.e. I made cake) to seduce Mr Bee to come with me to the the show homes.

The house we were interested in was the Ruthin by Redrow Homes. Here's the picture that we saw on the Internet which captivated me:

We originally thought the back part was a different house but we learned on viewing the floorplan that it was included. We couldn't believe that our budget could comfortably afford this. There had to be a catch.

To me, it was how a perfect house should look: double fronted, the ubiquitous lollipop bays with a pretty door. It wasn't a modern box like most new builds. It had real soul. Redrow describe it as being "inspired by the Arts and Crafts Movement". Why don't most developers build houses like these any more?

I called Redrow Homes and arranged to view some of their show homes and the plot the following Saturday. Mr Bee wasn't totally convinced - obviously more cake was required.

The Beginning

It all started when I was longingly browsing houses on rightmove.co.uk at the beginning of January 2011. I was dreaming of something a little bit bigger (than our terraced two bedroom) with a little more character.

I then came across a new build in Bracknell. At first I thought it was attached, but upon closer inspection it was a 4-bedroom detached house built in an old cottage style. It was comfortably within budget and so I couldn't understand where the catch was.

Perfect - a new build on the inside and an old style house on the outside. Now all I needed to do was to convince Mr B to view it with me.