A sinking feeling

I had an early meeting with Mal from Westpac. He was the loans officer I had been talking to earlier. The bond certificate had to be reissued. The current certificate was for an auction only, and could not be used to buy a non-auction property. However, it will be replaced without charge. I must also demonstrate that there are sufficient funds to back it up; in other words, documentation that the deposit will be paid on the Warrandyte property to be provided before a new certificate is issued. This is unhappy news.

It seems that the current certificate had been issued in error. Mal had assumed we already had the deposit. We thought we might have had the deposit too, last week, but that’s another issue. It would seem that Mal didn’t ask the right questions or didn’t check into everything. I was upfront with everyone.

So, now the problem expands. We can’t get the bond certificate until we get our own deposit. A sinking feeling developed in my stomach.

S blew up at one of our real estate agents and doesn’t want to deal with him anymore. He was adopting a business manner with her. As a consequence S was thinking of withdrawing the house from this agent in favour of an Eltham real estate agent, one that draws a different client base.

Before we came to Warrandyte we had been living in Hurstbridge, and Eltham is one of the main centres which is reasonably close to Hurstbridge. It was through an Eltham agent that we purchased the Warrandyte property. It was advertised in the real estate section of the local rag, which seldom covered many Warrandyte properties, dealing mostly with Hurstbridge, Eltham, Greensborough. In fact, most Warrandyte properties for sale appear in their own local newspaper, which we seldom got. It’s possible that with our current real estate agent not targeting their newspaper ads to the region where we lived prior to buying the property they were missing out on potential punters. After all, that’s where we used to live. Advertising locally, is a bit like preaching to the converted.

I emailed our agent, asking if we can get the buyer’s solicitor’s phone number, with a view to contacting them, or getting our conveyancer to contact them. It’s all very well of the buyer reassuring us, but that carries little weight. They may be engaged in a shonky; making more than one offer, and just biding their time. Perhaps they are willing to loose their $1000 partial deposit in favour of a better property. He agreed to contact her solicitor. He got back to me latter, with advice from her solicitor who told him that the UK property had settled yesterday, and £15,000 would be transferred as our deposit, and it would take about 24hrs to transfer, and this was in process.

This was excellent news, though S was only slightly impressed. It’s only one step. It’s still only words. We still need to see the deposit. But I’m definitely feeling a lot happier. The next couple days are going to be excruciating until the deposit has been paid. We could get a personal loan to cover our own deposit if required, and who knows, perhaps a bridging loan if we end up with two properties.