A busy day ...

... began at our bank, where we waited in a queue for an hour before seeing an advisor to help us transfer the mortgage to our solicitor's account. Then found our solicitor hadn't given us the full account number. A quick call on the mobile found someone in their office that could help (the cleaner?) and we managed to complete the transfer.


So, off down to the barn with measuring tapes, big ball of string, a flask for hot drinks and a table and 2 chairs for our 'site office'. We noticed someone's taken a gate off our plot, and there's a few extra scraps of asbestos sheet appeared in the barn. As soon as we complete the purchase I'm gonna start locking things up!


First job was to check whether we can fit a garage in against the rogue fence - we now think we can - but whilst we were doing that our neighbour approached us to talk about the paddock. Started off OK, then veered towards we won't be offered any extra land ... (big debate ensued)... then came back to 'here's the land we've marked out for you'.


Out came the ball of string. Trailed it round the pegs, measured the lengths of the sides, tapped it into the calculator (from the 'site office') and - hey presto - agreed the area and price. Just have to get that agreement conveyed to the two sets of solicitors before any further changes of minds.

Then finally met our immediate neighbours Darren and Sonia, and had a look round the farmhouse that they've been renovating for the last 3 years. Gave us our first chance to look at the east wall of our barn from their side, and got a pleasant surprise - there's a gargoyle built into the stonework on that elevation just above the rear barn door. Might try to find somewhere interesting to place that. It's just above the door on this photo ...

One small step

Got the mortgage today. Also spoke to our solicitor at some length about the famous fence. An interesting angle is that, even if we accept an abatement from the seller (the reduction in the sale price) because of the fence being on our land, we will still own the land to our original boundary. So we could later still inist that our neighbour takes it down. But by then that would be between us and the neighbour, nothing to do with the sellers. We're still considering what to do, and will visit the barn tomorrow to help us decide.

Subject to that abatement, we're ready to complete the purchase. Don't think the sellers are though, so that will be another dispute.

Who said buying at auction avoids the hassle of property transactions!

Nah, TT is the way

This afternoon Misan phones our mortgage provider, to be told they plan to transfer the funds to us on Tuesday. Wrong answer - that's too late. Misan throws a wobbler. The woman says she'll check and call back. She doesn't. Misan calls them again and they get it right eventually - they plan transfer it to us tomorrow.

So she then phones our bank again to get them to rethink their policy about TT's - this time they say that it will happen within 2 hours, not the 'up to 3 days' nonsense they told her this morning. Back on track with funding, then. Misan can be very persuasive!

Meanwhile the architect has posted us a letter and a sketch layout. The guest bedrooms are downstairs and the lounge upstairs. Hmmmm! Have to get Misan to convince him we can lower the ground floor level a bit more and get the headroom we need to live comfortably downstairs.

Now, about that fenceline. Misan ..... ?

Breaking news

4.5 days to completion (2 of which are weekend) and we've just got a letter from the sellers solicitor admitting that the fence encroaches into our land. They have offered a nominal reduction in the purchase price to compensate.

We gotta think about this now - what's in our best interest?

Now it's getting frustrating !

Thought we'd best check that we will have the funds available for completion if it happens on Tuesday - so Misan phoned the bank this morning, to be told that a telegraphic transfer from our account could take up to 3 working days! This is the 'immediate' service that you pay extra for; 3 days!! And we haven't received the mortgage yet - that's due to arrive tomorrow (surely that'll be OK, we paid an extra £40 to have that sent by ... telegraphic transfer!).

Do these institutions not want us to succeed?

We're confused

Our solicitor received 2 letters from the sellers' solicitor today. They've acknowledged that they made a hash of the barn contract, and sent an improved one - which our solicitor thinks is still so bad he's drafted his own and sent it back to them.

Then on the deal for the extra land, the seller's solicitor has written a 3 paragraph letter justifying why they now have to separate the barn and land deals, and attempting to explain the shape and the area and the eastern boundary and the price and .... its nonsense.

With all these problems, our solicitor now seriously doubts whether we'll be able to complete on the barn by Tuesday 3 Nov, and who knows about the land.

And we're still waiting to hear from the Architect, who was meant to send us his proposal this week so that we can instruct him to get started with a survey and some designs.

We thought it was all going too well.

An interesting weekend

Popped down to the barn yesterday to take some measurements of our barn plot and the extra land that our neighbour, Michael, had marked out.

As we arrived the drizzle got heavier. We struggled to get the car up the 'drive', donned our macs and only had an hour to take some critical measurements before heading off to Leicester for our niece's birthday lunch. We went more or less straight from that to the Royal Naval Association's Trafalgar dinner last night (I was accompanying Shipmate Misan - don't ask) so didn't have time to draw up our measurements until this morning ...

... and found we hadn't taken enough. So off we went again today in much better weather for a more comprehensive 'survey'. A first attempt to draw it didn't work, so after reflecting whilst Liverpool stuffed Man U, then setting up my new petrol strimmer, the second try made more sense. The land we've got with the barn is not as regular in shape as we first thought. And it's not as big as shown on the contract of sale. That's gonna be our first debate with our solicitor and the selling agents tomorrow.

Then the part of the paddock that the neighbour consortium have marked out to sell to us is an even stranger shape, and we can't see how they've come up with the area they have. Another discussion needed.

But it was a lovely day down there today. If we hadn't had Joy & Mark calling in at Warwick on their way from Swansea to London (it's OK, they've got a welsh satnav) I'm sure we'd have pottered round for a bit longer, maybe even have knocked on Darren's new door (he's hoping to finish the farmhouse for Christmas) and had a chat with him and a look at our barn from his courtyard. Have to leave that 'till next weekend now.

So Misan's going to make a few calls tomorrow to see how we can sort out these boundary issues before completion on 3 Nov. Keep your fingers crossed.

At last - some developments

For the last few days nothing has happened - no contact from the neighbours about the land, no news from the solicitor, no word from the bank (maybe that's a good thing), no new ideas from the architect, nothing to blog ...

... until tonight, when we had a call from our neighbour saying he still has some land to sell to us, and he's marked it out for us to look at this weekend. Great news. His solicitor has written to ours with a proposal - but of course there's a postal strike. Lets hope they use email.

Which I think they do, 'cos our solicitor sent me one today saying he's contacted the seller's solicitor about the apparent incorrect position (which I was asking him how we establish) of the fence to our east side - so having possibly patched up with the paddock consortium we might be about to upset our immediate neighbour. Oops!

Think we'll go to the barn tomorrow. Might take a cap to keep in my hand.

A few setbacks

Had some not-so-good news yesterday.

Negotiations for the extra land, which we thought were proceeding smoothly and amicably, have hit a few obstacles. The neighbour consortium that won the paddock at the auction think we're being too pushy. We thought we're just buying a bit that they don't want. And they somehow think we're the ones who made them pay £64k for it - we stopped at £47k, it was the tall, dark stranger that bid them up to the 60's. Oh dear, seems there's some patching up to do there. So we've backed off a bit to let things calm down. If they later want to sell us some land, then we'll reconsider it. In the meantime we'll concentrate on what we already (almost) own - the barn ...

... which the architect tells us has headroom problems, so he thinks we can't build what's been approved by the planners! Misan should be OK, but I might knock my head on the rafters, and her brothers would be able to step over them if they went upstairs. We're going to have to find some innovative solutions - doing a detailed survey of what's there now, lowering the ground floor inside the barn, raising the roof (which has to come off, anyway), going back with a new planning application, etc - all of which will delay starting on the conversion.

Meanwhile, Misan showed a prospective buyer round our house today, and if they decide to buy it they'd want to be in by Xmas. Anyone got a spare room, just for a few years ...?

Our first visitors

Mum & Dad came to see the barn today.

"What you going to do about all those cracks in the walls?"
"Repair them, Mum"
"It's a tin roof!"
"I know, Mum, we're going to change it to slate"
"Who's are those sheep in the field?"
"Our neighbours, Mum"
"Oh, I'm going to sit in the car"
"OK Mum"

Dad was a bit more practical, walked the paddock and met the neighbours.

How we got here

This is a bit of a monster blog to get us up to date, but stick with it ......

In June we saw one barn north of Coventry slip from our grasp as the owner pulled it from sale, then in July we were gazumped on a derelict cottage in Baddesley Clinton.  So when on Thursday 24 Sept I stumbled across this one coming up for auction 5 days later, I immediately took Marley (Michael & Nicola's little dog that we were looking after that day) for a walk in the country.  We both loved it, and had to work out how to convince Misan that this was the one.

We went off to Leeds on the Friday to return Marley, carried on to Manchester to meet up with our ex-ex-pat pat friends for our annual Nigerian Reunion weekend - and Misan still hadn't seen the barn.  When we got home on the Sunday evening we went to the barn and had a look around for about 15 mins in the evening twilight.  Decisions made - we were going to the auction on Tuesday.

I collected the legal pack on the Monday morning, passed it to our solicitor on the Monday evening and went through it with him for an hour on the Tuesday afternoon just before going down to the auction.

The guide price was £80-90,000.  The price shot up quickly before we joined in to stop the gavel dropping on £125k, then it kept going between 3 or 4 bidders until we won it just inside our limit!

That left us with no funds to bid for the paddock, which had a guide of £10-20k, but we did bid up to £47k before we pulled out, and it went for £64k!  A pretty expensive 2/3rd's of an acre of grazing land.

That was bad news.  The land that comes with the barn isn't that big.  But we immediately had good news as the paddock auction was won by a consortium of neighbours, and they came across to meet us after the auction and have agreed to sell us a bit of the paddock.  OK, it will be expensive for what it is, but it will add to the value of the barn and will give us the land we need for ground source heating and a big garden/orchard.

So we signed the contract and paid our 10% deposit.  Next day we cobbled together our savings to cover that.  Since then, it's been hectic, appointing the solicitor, arranging funding, meeting the planner, finding an architect, talking to a structural engineer (the more we investigate, the more we find out how much needs doing to stabilise the walls), getting quotes to remove the asbestos animal pen, visiting Grand Designs Live at the NEC, negotiating the extra land, trying to understand the VAT rules, taking photos and starting a video diary, doing a more detailed budget, meeting the neighbours, measuring the barn, collecting a trailer from Gill my sister, getting new wheels and tyres for the trailer after one tyre almost came off on the way home - all this in the last 2 weeks whilst I'm really busy at work and Misan chose to contract flu.

Completion of the purchase is set for 3 Nov ...

About the auction

There were over 200 at the auction, most of whom were interested in the barn, not the other 15 lots.  We wanted the barn, and a separate lot a 2/3rd acre paddock alongside.  The barn went for 2x guide price, we stopped bidding for the paddock at 3x guide, it went for 4x!!

We needed the complimentary drink that the auctioneers bought us while we waited to sign the contract - and a cheque for 10% deposit.

Our new project

This is our new blog about the knackered old stone barn that we bought at auction on Tues 29 Sept 2009.  We'll update this regularly and, once we've learnt how to, add some photos and maybe even a bit of video.  Keep watching this space.