paisleylass

A lil update. This time yesterday we were all excited, going through the processes of buying a lovely house, having had an offer accepted. Well that all changed last night, when the building inspector rang, closely followed by the pest inspector. Horrors! Foundation movement, cracking masonry, termite mud a go-go. Nope.

Back to Saturday morning inspections for us.. When we can face it again!

1.91 now!! Gosh!

That sounded amazing at the time. Gone up to nearly 1.96 now. Keep goin' heh heh!

Yeah I'm a bit confused about insurance and still don't have it. I can't answer half the questions anyway!

Now got a huuuge tick list of searches from the solicitor and I have no idea what to do with it! A few are already ticked, I assume they are mandatory? We only want the basics, no plans to extend, develop etc! So confusing!

Wow! I did find an alternative by OzCleen (?) in Coles, but I'm convinced Oven Pride works better! Cheers!

Registered for the postal vote but not convinced the ballot will turn up in enough time to return it.

Reading through the last few posts reminds me of the worst winter I have lived through, which may have been 2009/2010. It started late November, my office was opposite Glasgow Airport. Within a short time of arriving at work, the snow started. Soon afterwards, everyone was sent home. The airport had closed and all public transport was stopped. I was 'lucky' to live about a half hour walk away, and decided to walk it even though I'd been offered lifts. It took about one and a half hours, the snow was halfway up my calves by the time I got near home. Turned out the traffic conditions were so bad, some people who drove home took up to 8 hours.

Then there were several days the max temperature didn't get above -10!! And the time I left the house to go to work and slipped on black ice on the front path, injuring my leg.

I have always hated snow and ice and will be very happy if I never see a single flake of snow ever again!!

Agree with the above couple of posts. Everyone's different, live wherever you're happy and don't let regrets grind you down.

Oh, and for building and pest inspections, do consider using separate companies. They vary greatly in thoroughness, and combined inspections will likely lack in pest expertise. Because the house we're buying is 'older' (built 1986!), and a good bit above median price, we're going with separate companies. It will cost nearly twice as much but you don't want to skimp on these things! I would certainly not recommend using inspectors referred by the real estate agent, as they act purely in the seller's interest and will tend towards the less thorough inspections.

Beware that once an offer is accepted, things move bloody quickly! We were told Wednesday lunch time our offer was accepted, and because the final offer was verbal at that stage, we had to amend the contract with the new offer and email back. By yesterday -within 48 hours - I had to pay initial deposit, get the mortgage application in, arrange inspections and now we have to get home & contents insurance ASAP. So make sure things are in place as much as possible - research which inspection company you will use, choose a lender and get pre-approval, check out insurers (we weren't prepared for this and will probably have to go through a broker). Amazingly our mortgage was pre-approved the same day the offer was accepted, so once I received the full contract it was easy just to whizz it to the lender (ING, highly recommend) and they have already organised a valuation.

Good luck!

Thanks andromeda! Well, we are now buying close to our chosen suburbs, in Bridgeman Downs, near the border with Carseldine. Offer accepted Tuesday, initial deposit paid today and all wheels in motion. Valuation and inspections next week, should settle late May. Very happy with our choice, a house that ticks every box and then some.

Looking forward to a relaxing Saturday not traipsing round open homes!

The standard QLD contract has subject to finance/inspections built in, as long as details are completed. Both (!) the offer contracts we filled in had stuff like "sufficient to complete this transaction" and "bank of buyer's choice" already in those bits.

We are just going through this malarkey too! It gets better - after the intention to offer form, you get a contract to sign to be presented to the seller! 14 pages of legal guff.

I'm still confused about deposits, there's a small one (2k in our case) on contract date, a larger one on getting finance, and we still have the balance to pay to cover the 20%?!?! Silly.

14 days is standard for finance and inspections. Settlement is up to you, most sellers prefer the minimum 30 days.

Don't forget to include your conditions ie. if you want to include curtains, blinds, dishwasher...

1.91 now!! Gosh!

Just looked on the government website and it says that if registered for postal in advance ballot papers should be sent out 23rd-27th May.

Hope so, we might just scrape in then!

We have registered for postal vote but we are concerned about timing, especially as we are on holiday for over a week before the referendum! We used to get our ballot cards weeks in advance in Scotland but we're new to this postal lark.

Voting remain, quite resolutely.

Yeah, it's looking like a long wait, and then only if conditions are in favour of GBP and that's a huge 'if'!

I can see AUD strengthening againt USD ahead of the US election, already the rate has become pretty favourable ahead of our US holiday so I got some currency this week, but suspect there is further to go in that direction.

Bubbling just under 1.87 now, another volatile week.

Ha! I never thought to calculate via Pythagoras!! Cheers, that's about 16% extra lol. Sometimes I swim in a curve. Need a bigger pool!!

Similar thinking here gbye, although we'll soon (all being well) have an offset mortgage, meaning interest savings are greater than interest earned... And then there's the lack of tax, which really eats into earned interest.

I may have to do some spreadsheets to work out which is the lesser evil!

Given current indications, I strongly believe there is hope for GBP/AUD to show some improvement, rather than keep trending downwards. But things can change, quickly. Too many possible variables to take a gamble. But for now, we'll leave our GBP money where it is.

May be wishful thinking, as we have money to move and will need it here once we buy a house, but I tend to agree with this, published yesterday: http://www.australiandollarforecast.com/2016/04/21/4577/

EU referendum polls are pretty unreliable. However if betting odds are a good indication (but, how are they set?!), then remain is looking incredibly strong.

At the weekend, we thought we had found our ideal house! Ticked all the boxes, beautiful house, lovely street, but we were late and only had 10 mins to dash around. So went to the next open home on Tuesday all excited, 8m measuring tape in hand. All looked great, though we noticed a few updates needed. Then measured the garage. Nope. Barely over 5m long. The garage at our rental is 5.5m and it's a struggle to get the ute in without hitting the wall! Gutted. Yes we could alter it, but with the renos needed anyway plus we found the back garden pretty overlooked, we've backed out. Poop. But at the top of our budget, we need work required to be minimal.

A few lined up for Saturday, onward ho!

And we've done a full mortgage application for pre-approval. Should strengthen any offer we might make!

Exciiiiting!!

Wow Cal, that's a great size! My dream!! Where we rent it's 7.75 by 4 metres, but with the huge step it's more like 7m swimming length. I swim diagonally to get a slightly longer run-up heh.

No plants but there are a few small trees growing just on left of the pic behind the colorbond fence which is a few feet past the pool fence (can't be seen in this pic). [ATTACH=CONFIG]33340[/ATTACH]

Nice! It looks a good size, the pool safety sign looks miles off lol! Nice coping too, neat and clean. The aforementioned pool at the house we looked at needing resurfacing, the coping was ok but randomly had massive rocks concreted onto it, nightmare trip hazard when cleaning!

Some people do own their own properties

I am aware of that! At present we don't, but intend to very soon. As I said, I did some research when considering a house with a less-than-beautiful pool interior, seeing as we would be responsible for any repairs or upgrades.