Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Signed

I signed contracts for the little house on Belvoir Street today. I'm still reeling.

As well as contracts, I signed up for a mortgage with my employer, BigBank, with all it's attendant guarantees and check lists. Then there's the small matter of a cheque for $49,000 (10% or the purchase price).

The tenants will still be in the place 'til the middle of May. That gives me some breathing space to shop around for home insurance and to decide what physical changes I want to make to the property.

I've just been discussing my basic plans with my house mate, Aoife. She disagreed with every single opinion I had. Even down to the idea of removing the dividing wall downstairs, which I regard as fundamental. Admittedly, her ideas were grander and would make for an attractive home, but the planning regulations for a listed building would be a problem. And cost would be prohibitive.

If anyone out there has any suggestions I'm currently open to them all.

Saturday, March 03, 2007

Belvoir Street

It looks as though the house search has come to an abrupt end. As I have just agreed to buy this:
Sale Agreed

I can already see the start of problems. The scanned documents from the vendor were mostly illegible, and my solicitor has sent a list of questions to them that I never even countenanced. I'm sure these are pretty standard but they looked scary.

The house itself turns out to be heritage listed. They were quiet about that during the viewing. Of course, I never thought to ask either as the building is not THAT old. It's seems the Australian authorities get all misty eyed whenever they see a building that's more than about 20 minutes old. If you applied the same criteria for heritage listing in Dublin, everything inside the M50 would be a heritage site. While "heritage listed" sounds lovely, it may make certain extension plans I was thinking about a bit tricky.

All in all I am really excited and there's enough DIY there to keep me busy for the foreseeable future. Ideally I'd be calling in some free-labour debts. Unfortunately the small matter of the intervening planet will makes it unreasonable to expect my friends to drop round and operate a paint brush in exchange for pizza and beer.

In the short run there's the conveyancing to deal with. I'll probably need to get the place rewired. but I hope to be in it by May and then it's just the small matter of paying off a loan over the next 25 years.