Adventures of a Non-Binary Author – Those first few steps

As soon as we’re home from the mortgage advisor, we turn our attention towards the solicitors. We have the information we need to complete the startup form now. Once done, there are some bits we need to print and send off. Then we relax for the rest of the day. Rest of the weekend for my partner. I’m working Sunday again.

First thing Monday morning, and there’s a new form for us to fill in from the solicitors. By the end of Tuesday, we have the first lot of information from the sellers. We spend over an hour after work reading through everything together. There’s also more to print off, sign, and send back. It feels like a flurry of activity, but things will slow down from here. Our mortgage application doesn’t get sent off till Wednesday. We still haven’t booked in a home buyers survey. Solicitor haven’t done their searches yet. It feels like a lot right now. But things will slow down from here. At least for a bit.

The first lot of the enquiries have also been sent to the seller’s solicitor. The list is so short. Every round of enquiries sent on our failed purchase was always three or four pages long. There were always lots of notes at the start about why these things needed to be followed up on. There was never less than 8 enquiries. Not helped by the fact the previous ones were never answered satisfactorily. The last property was also leasehold, which probably didn’t help things any. But then so was the flat I owned. The one I sold. And total amount of enquiries for both us and the freehold management company never reached double digits. At least as far as I remember. Everyone on our side was helpful and fast, and everything was really smooth. So I’m not going to blame what happened last time on the property being leasehold. It sure didn’t help, but it certainly wasn’t the only problem.

Becoming part of an unfortunate statistic doesn’t feel great. Regardless of the reason. Regardless of how much control you had over the situation. So putting yourself back into that process again is allowed to feel more stressful than it did the first time. Because you know the pitfalls now. You understand what worse case looks like… feels like. So seeing such a small list of enquiries made me laugh with amazement. My partner even noted the use of the word please. Our solicitor got a little impatient with the solicitor for the previous property. In fact a lot of the correspondences between them sounded very catty or condescending. Something I pointed out to my partner at the time. We’re dealing with a freehold property this time. And a different firm. I suspect our solicitor is feeling optimistic. Or at least doesn’t have a reason to let the professional curtsy slip.

So maybe it’s okay for us to feel a little more optimistic. Moving forward towards our future home. One step at a time. Then again the next step is kind of an important one. Wednesday, mortgage application time.

To be continued…