Thursday, July 6, 2017

Buying a place in London - July 2017



April 2017

I am in London, UK during the first week to help Uttara buy a place. Here, buying a home in the coveted zones 1 and 2, is a high art and science. Also you can be blindsided by many curveballs that come at you. Some of them knock you out senseless. So the whole process, which leaves you emotionally drained and shell shocked, starts on Rightmove.co.uk. All properties for sale are eventually listed there. I say, eventually, because many get sold as soon as they are listed and even before they get on Rightmove. So much the demand, and so scarce the supply of good properties.

This was an educational week involving some high drama. The back story is two deals had fallen through prior to this and we were cautioned - until the deed is transferred and money exchanged anything can happen. Until then, the only thing that holds the buyer and seller together is a tenuous sale deed and good intentions. No deposit. Nothing. If the buyer or seller changes their mind or has cold feet they can withdraw. As simple as that! So it calls for the equanimity of a Buddha, the strategic wits of a grand master in chess and an acute sixth sense to identify the stench of foul play mixed in with other intangibles such as if the agent and seller trust you and want to do a deal with you. Unlike in North America, in this place bullshit walks in the form of very polite talk. So what did it take for this deal to go through?! Well, you will find out soon.

So back to the search! The Rightmove site is quite good in that you can identify the postal codes to search by and outline the area. You can then search within that area based on several other criteria - freehold/leasehold, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, flat or house etc. Once you narrow your search down, you start the painstaking process of going through the link for each one. On the site, every house looks like the inside of Lakshmi Mittal's mansion near Kensington High Street. The size, the light, the works. But when you actually see the place you know the photographs were a magician's illusion.

We saw three properties the day I landed. They were pretty poky by North American standards, had bad odour, the layout was off and there was a rattle every time a train passed by one of them. Some were damp needing a lot of work. Pretty depressing. If the area was nicer, by postal code, the properties were awful for the price. That initial orientation to the property scene had the desired effect of considerably lowering my expectations.

We soldiered on knowing we were in the quest for a unicorn. I crammed in as many viewings as I could during my week long sojourn. Things got even worse as I ventured out on my own. One property was up eight flights of stairs. The flat was immaculate but I was not training for a marathon and my lungs were quite nice - thank you very much. I thanked the agent for the workout and beat a hasty retreat as soon as I had a vision of me hauling suitcases up those flights of stairs, every-time I visited. Another place was behind a busy alley in front of warehouses where at prescribed times there was pandemonium as wares were uploaded and offloaded. And mind you this shock to the nerves, at least twice a day for a couple of hours each time, did not come at a cheap price tag. And neither did the three story dungeon, which passed off as a house, justify its cost. The agent suggested that the property would appreciate when the warehouses were redeveloped into residential properties. When? In 20 years?!

In the next one, the layout was decent. It was quirky with the inside space flowing into a 3 feet by 3 feet solarium. However, the kitchen was pretty informal, almost an afterthought- with room enough just for a toy fridge. When I pointed this to the agent, he countered, without missing a beat, that there is room for a little freezer beside it. And he actually appeared serious. Years of practice dealing with people who cannot suspend their disbelief.

And then as though to prove there was a God, we were pointed in the direction of The House. It was a bit over her budget but by now, after all the excuses that passed off as viable properties, this seemed like a steal. We liked it. We made an offer. We held our breath for a whole day and a half, waiting for the other shoe to drop! Aha you have been pranked! But no, our offer was accepted. We could not believe it, actually. It was just too good to be true. Someone up there was mocking us with this cruel trick. And that thought almost came to pass with what happened the next day. Early in the morning, we went in to see the house once again, this time with another agent. She saw how much we wanted it. That piece of information is significant for what was to come next! That afternoon, not knowing what lay in store, quite smug and secure, we boarded a train for a weekend getaway in the beautiful English countryside where our friend's gorgeous country home beckoned. It was Friday afternoon. As soon we were comfortably seated, we got a call from the agent we had met that day. The network was shitty. We pieced together the dreaded words, "another offer is coming through and we are legally obligated to consider it." No!! Also, she would not tell us anything other than the amount was above our offer. This could not be happening! We felt like the bottom had dropped out and we were about to be swallowed into a sink hole, namely the dark abyss of a new search. I knew my nerves could not take that. So we upped our offer by a fair bit- after all it was just words, we could walk away. She said she would call us back with the final verdict in an hour. We rode the train in suspense, missing the beautiful views the magnificent English countryside had on offer, just staring at our phones, waiting for that ring. We reached in a couple of hours and and still no call. I then made the dreaded call. The other offer had come in at the same price she said, but the seller preferred to go with us. Which part of all this was true we will never know. But we had to now decide if we really wanted it at the new price. After a cost benefit analysis that took 30 seconds we decided to stick with it. After all we needed to do our part to act in good faith, even if others did not? How would commercial transactions ever take place otherwise?!

After April

Next came the protracted delays with the legal work. Everyone marched to their own drummer and timeline. There was no deposit and there were no requisition or closing dates as in Canada. We had to stay very Zen putting out intentions for the deal to go through smoothly and quickly. We truly had no control over outcomes only to our reactions to them. When we asked our lawyer if she could commit the seller to timelines she said it all depended on the seller’s purchase of his property and whether the people selling to him were buying and so on in an endless chain. With all these evasive responses, we were not convinced our purchase would be completed this year! Not only did everything move at the pace of molasses it all appeared very disjointed. For instance, the agents did not bother removing the "for sale" sign for over 2 weeks and only after we repeatedly questioned its dubious presence. Then the seller’s lawyer took off on vacation, soon to be followed by the seller. The Borough did not help matters taking its own sweet time with searches. Added to this was the complexity of the due diligence delays of the sellers' purchase of his property. Not just stars but whole universes had to align, it seemed. With no money exchanged between parties the only two parties interested in hastening the deal were our unencumbered daughter who was hard pressed to give notice to her landlord on her rental, and the mortgagor. Weeks went by excruciatingly slowly and major world events made London the cynosure of all eyes. Terrorist attacks and national elections to name just a couple. Such significant events had not occurred so close to each other in that city since the world wars! It felt to my selfish mind like the deal was being pressure tested every which way. Soon we gave each other high fives if one piece moved in one week. In the meantime we did not want any delays from our end and she hastily transferred money to the lawyers trust account, where it languished, earning interest for some unknown entity when it should have been building equity for us. I even resumed by meditation practice to maintain my composure!

During this time my husband and I travelled across continents always staying close to our computers to review documents and offer input. And then just like that one day, without too much notice, the contracts were exchanged on a Friday. Ironically our daughter was on a business trip that week and could not be reached by her lawyer precisely when her consent was needed! Then on the Monday, the deal was completed and she had the keys. In the end it all felt a little anticlimactic. All that anxiety through the three month long wait was for nothing? Was the drama all imagined? Truth is, the system did not inspire trust. Anyway, soon this much coveted house will be so taken for granted and become the new normal for our daughter who will go on to tackle and scale the next frontier.

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