Everything went through ok last week which was nice. We also received the mortgage offer through the post, and it is at the correct rate of 4.65% which is good, as the rate went up to 4.79% last week!

I’m off on holiday for 2 weeks on friday, but I’ll be back in the last week of July and we will be going to view the house again to see how things are coming along. It’s all getting very exciting!

We found out on Monday that the mortgage has finally been approved wtihout a problem. So today I am going to the solicitors to hand over the signed contract and the remaining 7,250. Which will be hard. All that money….

We are happier with the contract now that we know all the restrictions are pretty standard and are unlikely to be rigidly enforced unless you really take the mickey and construct a huge shed or something.

Hopefully everything should go through on friday as expected and we will be on the home run!

We received the contract that is due for exchange on 30th June yesterday, and I am very annoyed. Firstly it seems that the solicitors are charging a 100+VAT (why can’t they just say 117.50!) ‘engrossment fee’ for printing out the contracts. Scandalous!

Also Crest have put in the contract that we can’t erect any structures within the garden for 5 years! That includes garden sheds! How ridiculous is that…

Also we can’t put a TV aerial on the roof, or remove the shrubs from the front garden. There are no time limits on those two things, so it could be forever! I can’t see any consequences listed, but I presume it will invalidate the NHBC warranty if we break the contract. Talk about being petty though – we can’t remove the shrubs!! What if they are horrible??

Also if there are problems with the road in our cul-de-sac we have to help pay for the costs of repair, although the wording wasn’t as strong on that part so it sounds voluntary.

I never expected there to be so many weird conditions attached to a house purchase….

Yesterday we went to the solictiors and gave him copies of our ID (and paid him 169 for the Council Searches and Environmental Search), went to the bank and opened a joint account and went to the Crest Nicholson office again to see exactly the kitchen and tile choices that have been made.

We are a bit happier with the kitchen worktops now, the black granite looks quite smart with the oak cupboards. Also light blue tiles have been chosen for the downstairs bathroom, which is lucky as we had been buying light blue accessories for it!

We are both really worried that things will go according to plan as things seem to be going a bit too well at the moment, surely something has to go wrong at some point? I just hope we get the mortgage as promised by the Mortrgage Advisor. He seemed pretty convinced it wouldn’t be a problem. We go on holiday on July 8th, so I hope it is all sorted by then, I don’t want to be worrying for 2 weeks while we are in France.

We found out yesterday that the previous ‘reserver’ who pulled out had already chosen the kitchen units – she chose Bromley oak units and a ‘Black Granite’ worktop. Which the girlfriend is not very happy about at all. We really don’t want black worktops as we will have to buy everything in chrome, which is more expensive, and also black is a bit depressing really. We wanted a lighter colour to make the kitchen look fresh.

We are calling in this evening to see the actual colours, but judging by the black granite I have seen browsing the net, I am not hopeful. If we don’t like it i’ll kick up a stink, but I doubt it will do any good, they have already ordered the units.

On another note, I spoke to the mortgage advisor and solicitior yesterday and got things moving with both of them. The solictior needs something called a proforma from Crest, but when I asked them to send it they said Head office would send it, but they didn’t give me much confidence that it would be done very quickly…. We only have 28 days to get all the paperwork sorted so I hope they pull thier finger out. FYI, 28 days is a Crest deadline.