So, last week I hinted at the issues that had prevented Onion Girl and I from moving house, and I promised a more in-depth explanation when I had sufficiently extricated myself from the situation to review it sensibly (that is without flying into fits of rage or descending into defeated sobs!), and since I’ve had to explain the situation to people around numerous times, I think I can do so now!
Brace yourselves, this may be quite long…
So, we arranged with the Estate Agent a moving date of Saturday 11th June. He contacted the current tenant of the property (who also happens to be the landlady) and this date was agreed by all, and so we all organised removal vans, time off work, the cancellation of services and utilities to our existing homes, etc. and prepared for the big day. However, two days before we were due to move – Thursday – Larter (who we’re moving in with) calls me to say there may be a problem with moving on the Saturday, but it hadn’t been confirmed yet. He was waiting on a call back from the estate agent. Anyway, after a few hours of waiting, I called the agent myself, and he was still waiting to hear back from the landlady. Thursday drew to a close with still no word, so the three of us (Larter, Onion Girl, and myself) agreed to go to the office of the agent the following morning since we’d all booked the time off work to spend the day packing the final boxes and making last-minute preparations.
When we arrived he explained that the the current tenant wasn’t just a tenant, she was the property owner, and would be our landlady when we moved in – this neatly did away with our demand that she be moved out and we be moved in, since she’d reached the end of her tenancy and Onion Girl and I were about to be made homeless (our tenancy was due to end the following Tuesday). Apparently the landlady was waiting for final paperwork (some council survey or something) to be wrapped-up by her solicitors, and had assumed it would only take them a few days. This meant that there was a possibility of us still being moved in that weekend, or Monday at the latest. This wasn’t too bad, as we’d all booked the following week off to unpack and settle in to the new place.
However, ten minutes after we left the office, we received a call from the agent with some rather grim news – the landlady had contacted her solicitors and they had informed her that this paperwork could take up to two weeks to complete. This meant no moving that weekend. In attempt to explain how this made us feel, imagine on Christmas Eve you discover that Christmas no longer exists, and then someone runs up and kicks you in the stomach. Yeah, it was a bit like that.
So, we hurried back to the agents office to discuss possible ways out of this – Onion Girl and I were due to be leaving our flat permanently in less than four days, and the house wouldn’t be available for at least a week after that… The agent (to his credit) did try very hard to find alternatives. He offered us temporary accommodation in a shared house, and even spent time with us searching on line for other properties offered through other agencies. Fortunately for us, when we spoke to our current estate agent, they were willing (and able since the new tenant isn’t moving in ’til the 1st July) to let us extend our tenancy at the Rooncave by two weeks.
This meant that our week off was utterly wasted, which was annoying, and it meant we’d now need to book yet more time off for when we actually moved. But we couldn’t do that yet since we didn’t know exactly when that would be! So, the following Saturday (one week after we should originally have moved house) we returned to the agents office, and he finally gave us something approaching good news – the survey/paperwork had been completed, and the final exchange of contracts was going ahead early the following week, meaning that we should be good to move in the 28th June (the day our extended tenancy ends at the Rooncave), if not before.
And that’s where we stand at the moment. We’re still chasing the agent to get confirmation of the exact date we’ll be moving, be it this weekend or early next week (which, now that I come to think of it, is bloody ridiculous! We’re moving at some point in the next seven days, but we have no idea when!), Onion Girl is still stressing herself mad about the whole thing, and I’m starting to wish we hadn’t bothered at all. What exacerbates the whole situation is that the estate agent has only once in the last two and a half months returned my calls. Or any of our calls. Or e-mails. Even on the Thursday morning when we first discovered there was an issue, it was Larter calling him. The agent has been utterly useless, and we will not be using the agency again (I shan’t post their name here, but those on my FaceBook will know which agency I’m talking about) because they’ve proven themselves utterly unreliable and totally unprofessional – before they even advertised the property they should have gotten confirmed, precise dates from the landlady/tenant and stuck to them. We’re their newest customers, and they’ve already nearly made us homeless (any further delays and we will actually be homeless, sleeping on my parents floor!)!
Anywho, I’m about to call the estate agent yet again and try to get an exact moving date so that I can book the time off… wish me luck.
TTFN