There is a note on my phone from 12 September 2024 called "Second viewing". It has eleven lines. We asked about parking, bin day, which way the garden faces, whether the 2008 fridge-freezer was staying and whether the loft was boarded. Not one line mentions rain.
A week on Thursday, 15 January, it will be a year since the 3.30pm phone call that exchanged contracts. Since I sort everything into columns anyway, here are two: what we'd keep if we bought again, and what we'd change. None of this is advice. It's what we'd say to ourselves a year ago, and your own solicitor and surveyor are the people to ask about yours.
What we'd keep
The Level 2 survey, at £560. It found the five problems that got us £2,500 off, and nothing in the year has been a bigger shock than the report said it might be. A Level 3 would have cost more for a house with no extension and no structural cracks, so I still think we chose well. A surveyor can tell you which one suits a house like yours.
The fee-free five-year fix at 4.84%. In December 2024 I worked out the sums over five years against a lower rate with a £999 fee, and I would land in the same place again for our situation. Ask a broker to run your own numbers, because the answer depends on how long you expect to stay.
Tenants in common, with the £300 declaration of trust. The evening at the kitchen table was awkward for about twenty minutes and then fine. We haven't needed the document, which is rather the point of it.
What we'd change
- Order the broadband the day the searches come back, and look at the pole. We ordered on Friday 17 January, two days after exchange. The first visit on 6 February failed over a safety check on the pole across the road, and we spent 13 days on a phone hotspot.
- Put an electrical report in the buying budget. We asked for money off on the strength of an electrician's ballpark for a new consumer unit. The £180 report in February then found a scorched kitchen socket nobody had mentioned. If the seller had allowed it, we'd have asked an electrician in before exchange.
- Ask for the boiler's service history. The service book turned up in a kitchen cupboard in February with a last stamp older than I would have liked. The first service on 6 March was £85 and the verdict was "tired but fine". In December came the diverter valve, at £240.
A smaller one: I'd ask to look behind the wardrobe. At both viewings it stood against the end wall of the back bedroom, and we both admired how solid it looked. We found the black mould behind it one Sunday in mid-February.
The question we didn't ask
Both viewings were on dry days. We stood in the back garden, said it was lovely, admired the view down the valley and wrote down which way it faced. In August, on a wet evening, Matt looked out of the back bedroom window and watched the gutter overflow at the corner and sheet down the gable wall, on the outside of the very spot where the mould was. The roofer who did the tiles in April had pointed at that corner and said it would want looking at. He was right, and the repair was £420 in September.
If I could add one line to the note it would be this: where does the water go when it rains hard? The agent might have shrugged. But Karen might have known, or a neighbour, or Dennis's old paperwork, and we would have gone into the exchange knowing what to look at instead of finding out on a wet evening in August. Dennis lived there for 45 years, and that house has been through a lot of weather with him.
On Thursday, if it is raining, I'll stand at the back door at 3.30pm and watch where the water goes. If it's dry, I'll do it on the next wet day. I expect Maureen to ask what I'm doing.
