I actually do have a bunch of non-housing-related posts teed up, but I've been absolutely buried on assignment, putting together a 14,000-word draft for something else. True, the project was self-assigned, but that doesn't make it any less important -- indeed, I'm slowly coming to realize that those are the only important ones.
I also really wanted to use this title. ("Discoed" is a town in Wales. Where we might soon be living. Stay with me, here.)
Things have been going really well lately. My physical strength and stamina are verrrrrry slowly returning from a presumed encounter with COVID last month (or just some other virus that sucker-punched me; I didn't get tested, and the symptoms weren't an exact match); I'm starting to work through my abject terror of unstructured time and it is beginning to dawn on me just how much I enjoy my new and completely intoxicating freedom (yes, even in "lockdown"); and, coming up on my one-year anniversary of (accidentally) moving to England and living, for the first time, with my husband, I continue to marvel at just how absurdly lucky I've been in love.
Great time to get a text from the landlord summarily telling us to vacate the house by the end of the month, eh?
I mean, health and husband mean I'm still doing superbly on balance -- don't get me wrong -- but it's hard to overstate just how shite this is. The average home purchase, pandemic NOT factored in, takes more than three months from start to finish. We cannot buy before eviction. If we go into another rental now, we're out of the market for another year. If prices continue to rise as forecast, our buying power will slip further, and we can barely afford the sort of place we want now as it is.
I've spent the day in a kind of panicked stupor (was supposed to be doing my taxes today, so there might have been a slight bias toward procrastination anyway). We could challenge the landlord -- I mean, I suppose we'll pretty much have to, as there also aren't any suitable rentals on the market right now, and there's fairly unambiguous government guidance preventing short-notice property repossessions during lockdown. Still, I'd prefer things not to get nasty, and I'd also prefer he not exercise his right to troop potential (and potentially Brazilian-variant-carrying) buyers through our space. And, too, lockdown is easing soon -- not sure whether these tenant protections will likewise ease.
We could buy quickly if we bought for cash. We don't have a lot of cash, but it'd get us something in the suburbs. Or in Wales.
Rentals are so incredibly depressing -- houses for sale in this area tend to be dreary enough, and rentals are the ones that are too ghastly to sell -- that even a modest cash-bought one would likely be nicer. And, of course, we'd hopefully benefit from the rising prices and thus preserve our purchasing power when we come back to the market in a couple years' time.
Or, we could put in a mortgage-able offer on one of the properties we've been considering lately -- Pelican House, or the Clevedon cottage. Or the one in Wales. It wouldn't go through quickly, but if we can get an offer accepted somewhere very soon, there's a good chance of completion before the additional notice we extract from our landlord expires.
None of this is ideal. The damn market has absolutely disappeared in the last few months. I've tracked it for over a year -- normal active volume is around 10,000 listings for the area in a 10-mile radius from the city. It currently stands at 1,383. I just know in my bones that pent-up supply is about to burst forth, probably temporarily depressing prices while it firehoses out, and we're gonna be shut out of it, and that really sucks.
Truly first-world problems -- believe me, I appreciate that -- but deeply frustrating and unhappy-making nonetheless. Westward, probably, ho.
(Not really. That's in Devon.)
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