how we won a house

today’s big news is we won a house.  but i should also say that we got esther’s interim report and she it is excellent.  in fact the word excellent is used liberally throughout.  so that’s jolly good.

here’s a quick summary of what happened today with the house.  fast forward if you can’t be bothered to read it all. 

And between every step you can insert ‘did lots of praying’!

• got up earlier than normal as couldn’t sleep
• did some work / emails until 8
• chatted with the selling agent who lives on our road so popped round to explain how the auction would work and discuss some of the legal changes we wanted to the documentation
• did another check of bank balances to check for deposit money
• did another check on my calculations of our highest bidding position
• did a work conference call 9-9.40
• just as i was about to leave got call from our letting agents saying our landlords want to sell our current home (we knew this already of course) and that would complicate (ie reduce the chances of breaking our tenancy before November).  We’d already factored the worst case of paying rent here and a mortgage in the new place in to our bidding price, but letting agent didn’t sound too hopeful.
• drove to the auction house
• entered auction room 30 minutes in the to the auction to find they’d only got to number 4.  we were number 17
• took up a seat on my own half way to the back at the edge.  tried to work out who the other serious bidders were going to be (we knew they’d be one other family bidding)
• did lots of emails/read the Guardian newspaper on my phone whilst waiting for our lot to arrive.  was over an hour later than expected
• 5 minutes before our lot was called i look at my home emails and see an email from our landlords sent direct to me saying “don’t worry about the termination date, i’m sure we can sort something out”.  Don’t adjust our bidding ceiling just in case, but relax a little bit
• lot 16 is called.  a 7 bedroom property in a posh street near us.  expecting it might fetch big bucks and set high unrealistic expectations for lot 17.  bit no one bid, so quickly we moved to lot 17
• heart rate increased as auctioneer extolled the benefits of buying the house.  i knew the benefits, i wanted to get bidding
• opening bid came from the other people
• ping ponged up in $10K increments between me and other bidders
• stopped at a figure which i’d bid.  seemed to be good as no one else bidding
• then agents said ‘can you bid $1K more’?   i asked why.  she said ‘so you’ll be the highest bidder’
• realised my last bid had been missed so jumped up another $5K
• two more ping pongs of $5k and it was just me left. going once, twice. bang.
• auctioneer says “i’d love to sell it to you for that price, but it’s no where near the vendor’s reserve’.  my assistant will come and talk to you”
• vendor’s agent says “what’s the highest you’ll go?”
• i don’t answer the question but say i’ll offer $20K more
• the vendor is on the phone and isn’t having it.
• vendor’s agent comes over and shows me the reserve that i must at least meet.
• i say (genuinely) i can’t bid that high as it’s higher than my reserve i up my offer $20K and add $1K to make it sound better.  Still comfortably within budget too.
• more phone conversations, they agree to lower the reserve to meet my offer
• the agent calls it out, it gets put on the screen
• auctioneer then throws it to the floor to see if anyone will improve on it
• they don’t.  hammer falls.  people applaud (hoorah)
• we win a house
• i’m surprisingly calm
• we fill in paperwork as the day’s auction proceedings end
• as we fill in the paperwork and the room is cleared someone behind me goes over to an old piano and slowly plays the hymn ‘How great thou art’ in the background (i totally forgot about that until later this afternoon)
• the agent then went to the vendor’s house (our new house) to get their signatures, and then caught up with jane later in the day for her signature
• i drove in to work , found a perfect car parking spot, then later nipped up to the local bank to transfer the deposit money

here’s a bird i saw outside the window of the auction room

Settlement (completion) date is to be decided.  but it’ll be between end of May and end of July, depending on when we can get out of our lease here.

Thanks for everyone who helped us practically or prayerfully along the way.  it’s not over yet, but it’s certainly legally binding!

exciting 🙂