FOR SALE
We are buying our first
house (hopefully by the end of this week, it will be bought instead of 'buying'). Wait, let me clarify, we live in London, so you have to be an oil baron
to buy an actual house. So, we are buying our first flat. Which is a feat in itself
considering property prices in this city are rising faster than a Kardashian’s
hemline.
To be honest, it is not
something I ever thought we would be able to do. As most of you know that have
secured a mortgage in the last few years, you now have to practically promise
your first born child, pee in a cup and dance like a monkey in order to get a bank to
look at you. Ahhhh gone are the good old days when they gave you a mortgage for simply showing up (I kid; that wasn’t the answer either as it turned out). To make
matters worse when you’re self employed you may as well walk into the mortgage
advisors office and tell them you’re a prostitute, because that is about as much
credibility being self employed gets you. But alas, after several exhaustive
months of mountains of paperwork, we were approved for a mortgage – I was getting acupuncture
(to CALM down) when my husband called to tell me the news, if that gives you any idea of
my current stress levels.
After approval, as you wait for the property to get surveyed, approved, & blessed by a team of anti-damp shamans (I wish)...you move
into the glorious phase of, 'okay, we have this place, now what on earth shall we do with
it considering it looks like it's been lived in by a bunch of unruly frat boys.' I quickly learned that not only do I know very little about actual design, but after a few
paint swatches, my eyes cross, and my husband has to wake me up
from a colour induced slumber. Let’s put it this way, I definitely know what I
like (and more importantly what I don’t like), but the journey through
thousands of paint, tile and carpet samples - that just make me sneeze – to figure out that I really
just don’t love carpet is pretty damn fatiguing. Then of course you realise the difference between reality and 'laughable never gonna happen-ity' in terms of budgeting any sort of house renovations. There is what you want it to look like, and what you can afford it to look like. Two very different things.
The other thing that an American quickly realizes (obviously I knew this years ago,
but as I wasn’t a home owner I simply scoffed at the lunacy of it) is that things
over here are done very differently. When you start saying things like Freehold
and Leasehold to a foreigner like myself, we look at you like you’ve literally
lost your mind. But in nutshell, if you buy a leasehold property in England, you own
the flat, but not the land it’s sitting on. Yes you heard me. So in order to do
any alterations, additions or anything structural to the flat, you will need
permission from the Freeholder. In our case, we are part owners of
the freehold as we own a flat in a period building of three flats. This sounds promising doesn’t it? But wait for it, as we’re only part
owners of the freehold, we still have to ask the other freeholders if say we want to put down
wood floor in our flat, or put in a new bathroom; so essentially, you own the dress,
but you have ask the neighbor if you can zip the damn thing up. From where I
come from, if I buy a house/apartment and want to put in a strobe light and wood floor down with the
Presidents face etched into it, I can (gosh, so many presidents, so little time).
So needless to say the last
few months have meant I’ve slept for about twenty minutes as my husband and I have obsessed over
the minutiae of how, what, where and what colour (& let’s be frank, at this point I have my sister on
speed dial as my husband and I have deemed her the 'style guru'. Cause, well, she is). Of
course the King - in the midst of all this - has now decided he likes black carpet and purple walls. I just smile,
nod and then politely tell him in our relationship I’m the freeholder, and the freeholder says no.