This spring, we put our house on the market and have been seriously looking for a smaller cheaper place to move to. The intention is to free up cash to help Rowan and Jesse get started on the housing ladder and to give us some funds to spend on making our Italian house into the home we envisage. We want to move now while we are still young enough to have the energy and we want to find a home we could imagine spending the rest of our lives in.
The sale has gone pretty well. We did a massive declutter and got the house looking pretty good for photos and viewings. We were lucky enough to get a few people seriously interested which helped push the offer we finally accepted a bit above the asking price.
On the purchase side, we came to the conclusion that our budget was not really enough to find a suitable forever home. We found a couple of interesting places in Belsize Park: a lovely bright flat in a mansion block and a very attractive mews house right next to Belsize Village. We put in an offer on the flat and it was accepted. It would leave us rather short of money for the Italian work, but would allow us to fulfil our commitments to the kids.
We had one final booked viewing remaining which we decided to go to anyway. This was primarily because it was potentially the Brewer’s old flat which I have fond memories of visiting often in my childhood. I contacted Jamie to find out if it was, in fact, their flat and it turned out to be the case. We had to go and see it and we arranged to take Jamie with us. We met Jamie in the Woodman for lunch and went for a rather emotionally charged viewing. The current owners had bought it from the Brewers about 25 years before and knew Christian.
The flat was lovely and really threw the cat amongst the pigeons. While the Belsize Park flat had lots of light in most rooms and a lovely bright double aspect living room, one of the bedrooms looked out onto a light well. It was a compromise we were prepared to make, but this flat in Southwood Mansions has no such issue. Every room has proper windows that look out on something. It also has a delightful kitchen that’s large enough for three or four to eat in and a west facing balcony to catch the evening sun.
So the Southwood Mansions flat is really nice, much closer to friends and family and considerably cheaper. What’s not to like. We went back for a second viewing next day and put in an offer there and then. Happily, it was accepted and we are all set for a much more local move that will give us the funds we want for Italy and then some.
Everything is in the hands of solicitors, the survey is booked and we are planning a trip to Italy before we have to get serious about actually packing up and moving.