Helen's Big Idea (number two)

It was ten months since we had put our flat on the market. Still the prospective buyers trudged through, moaning about climbing stairs to the flat, the roof terrace being on the roof, the fact their toddler might plunge from the unprotected full height window with a five storey drop to the back garden (what can I say? It was built in the 70s). But we had three still-available properties on the shortlist - and we both agreed which was our favourite.

Then Helen, who you remember started our whole rural trajectory with a simple short phrase, did it again.

“There must be another way of doing this, without selling the flat.”

Like Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now, I felt “like I’d been shot… with a silver bullet… right through my forehead… and I thought… my God! The genius of that!” It had never occurred to me that there might be another way. But that’s why she’s at the pinnacle of her profession while I scrabble around like a corporate troubadour. Anyway, I rang a mortgage broker, explained our plight, and said “I don’t suppose by any chance there’s another way of doing this?” Without hesitation, he suggested we let out our flat and use a buy-to-let mortgage to raise the capital that would have come from selling it.

Col. Kurtz contemplates renting out part of his compound

I had another Marlon Brando moment. This broker was an innovator supreme, effortlessly churning out new and radical ways of facilitating house moves. On the phone to a colleague, I told her about this futuristic way of moving house. “Oh yes, that’s what I did,” she said casually. As did the next person I talked to about it. Clearly everybody knew about this scheme but me. Still, we had joined the club now. We could talk with a straight face about our Property Portfolio. We could hire men who looked like Sumo wrestlers with the head of Ray Winstone to visit our tenants when they fell behind with their rent.

So at last we were All Systems Go. We could get on with our sensible plan to upsize and take on more debt in preparation for retirement. I was able to enjoy ringing estate agents and saying “Yah, we’re chain free, just have a property portfolio in London.” The agents waved us through, delighted to arrange a viewing. Things just got real. 

And so we found our third Dream House.

Fibre broadband: tick. Proximity to station: ten minutes to Taunton, whence 2 hours to London - big tick. Edge of village, unoverlooked: tick. On the edge of the Quantock Hills: bonus tick. Close to a Waitrose: expat Londoners tick. Mum’s Annexe: tick, with a nice view of the garden. Oh, and did I mention the house was lovely? So were the owners, two retired dentists who now did the kind of things you imagined dentists would do in retirement, like making tiny detailed model ships with precision moving parts, and cutting the lawn with nail scissors. I tried to keep my mouth closed while talking to them, anxious to avoid a spontaneous scene from Marathon Man.

The sellers push back on our offer

I’m not the first person to point this out, but there is something bizarre about choosing a home based on a 15 minute whizz round. And yet your unconscious mind seems to know whether or not it is the right place for you. We knew. The owners told us they were moving as the house was too big for two people. We smiled sympathetically, trying to look like the kind of couple who hosted raves every other night, secretly fantasising about finally having Room For Everything, something we had never really managed throughout our home owning career.

We made an offer.  After a small bit of to-ing and fro-ing, they accepted. We found a solicitor. Called Mercedes. (Well, the last time we moved we’d used a solicitor called Rhapsody, and had standards to maintain). We started looking at our own flat through a Renting rather than Selling lens. Unfortunately we realised that all the flaws - for which we’d invoke Caveat Emptor if someone was buying it - would not wash with tenants who would be happy to ring on a Saturday night to tell you the roof terrace lights didn’t work.

I employed advanced psychological techniques to deal with this new challenge: I decided not to think about it. For now we would enjoy the purchase of Dream Home 3. I mean, we only had local authority searches, flood report, a survey on a 200 year old house and a mortgage application to come. What could possibly go wrong?