About bloody time!

A busy day, the biggest event that took place was that the deposit came through; about $36,400 of it according to the real estate agent.

But it was frantic day before that news came though. B, the Canberra real estate agent, had already written to me with a copy of the Instructions of Sale saying exchange of contracts was to be tomorrow. She also said I could inspect the property this week. Which was nice, but I wanted to ward her off. I suggested I take the contract to Melbourne, so that both S and I could study it properly. My actual reasoning was that, perhaps the deposit would be through by then. I was just trying to buy myself some extra time. Anyway, as it turned out she couldn’t tee up a time to see the work, and was to contact me later, possibly the following day. So there I was talking about various arrangements, trying to appear nonchalant, and all the while I was fretting that we might get caught out. The things I said and the manner I said them bore little relation to what I was thinking, most of the time.

I got a call from William Heague. This is the company who will be doing my conveyancing for the Flynn property. It appears that my previous contact Abby will no longer be doing this and I’ll be working with Vicki. She seems okay, and recommended having the work written into the contract, which sounds like a good idea to me. Though, you wonder about passing work from one person to the next. I hate picking up the threads of someone else’s work. It’s so hard to do. I also spoke to her about changing finance from Westpac to Virgin, which wasn’t a problem, she said. I just have to keep her posted. However, there was a problem on the vendor’s side with a change in solicitor. It seems that the owner, who is a lawyer, was going to do everything himself, will now only do his own property. This may have been the reason B said the contract exchange will be next week. That’s a relief. That was absolutely great timing on their part.

As far as our Warrandyte real estate agent was concerned, in addition to asking him to contact the bank to check for possible hold ups, at S’s suggestion I pressed the idea that our buyer get a personal loan to cover the deposit, and that if the Canberra property fell foul because our buyer’s deposit wasn’t coming through that we cancel the sale and consider removing the property from the market. Within an hour he was on the phone saying he had the deposit in his trust account. At bloody last! Was that coincidence, or did my threat get him on the phone to his bank manager to hurry things along. Who knows.

I opened my little bottle of champagne, that I’d been keeping for the purpose. S didn’t want her’s. She was feeling so flat, and generally pissed off over the whole experience that she didn't have the appetite for it. I felt a bit like that too. The chance of revelling in the excitement of the purchase of our new house had been extinguished by the antics of our buyer. The worry she put us through was horrible. It just wasn’t fair.

I spent ages on the phone to Virgin Home Loans getting a loan application lodged. S didn’t like the experience either when she had to go through it with them too. Virgin have relatively low fees and their interest rate was better than Westpac could offer. I rang Mal at Westpac and told him of what Virgin could offer. I wanted to play one off against the other. He said he couldn’t better the rate, except to offer a fixed interest rate for 3 years, which was better than Virgin’s fixed 3-year rate.

I raised the issue of the Bond Certificate with Mal, and he said he was only doing that under the assumption the loan would be provided through Westpac. He implied that I’d have to go through a bank for another Bond Certificate. This was not true. I don’t think he likes Virgin. Well, it’s the opposition, and darned good competition too. I subsequently rang Deposit Power, and was advised that anyone with the appropriate documentation can apply for a certificate. However, they do make you run around gathering documentation: the Melbourne house contract for sale, the Melbourne house title, the Canberra house contract, finance approval or pre-approval statement.