Moving House

When 2007 begun we really had no idea that Nigel would get a job with HDS GSS. But within just a few weeks of a few emails and a telephone interview, he has been offered a contract with them. The contract allows him to be home based not office based, but does require 50-60% of his time travelling away at cleints sites around UK and Europe.

This has meant for two reasons we have decided its the right time for us to move to the Congleton area. Firstly Nige is going to be travelling by air frequently so it would be best to be closer to Manchester Airport and Secondly as Nige is going to be travelling we would like to be closer to my family. We have always had it in our minds to move over to Congleton at some point so our children can grow up with their cousins.

So we've started the ball rolling I thought it would be good to look back and see how the move progressed or not as the case maybe! So far we've had valuations on the house differing by £15,000 but two estate agencies agreed at the high end of the valuation at £189,995. I was reluctant to pay estate agencies fees when the majority of selling is now done through the internet sites, but we've decided to go with them in the end because we may require the agency to do some assisted viewings.

Yesterday we were refused a mortgage with our current lenders Alliance and Leiscester because nige has only had his Ltd company for 3 months. However, I have been in touch with an IT contractors mortgage advisor that i found on the internet and they have been able to offer us a really good rate 4.99% with Portman using just nige's hourly rate as a contractor. So although the interest rate has just gone up and it will have changed again probably by the time we buy at least we have a way to get a competitive mortgage rate.

However, we will have to pay a penalty to come out of our current mortgage which is another cost that we will try to get from reducing the asking price of our new house.

It's all very expensive moving house - but we feel that this is our last move for a while. We'd like to find a home that will be our family home for our children to go to school from, so its all worth it.