It's not if we move....

No!

It's when!

Hold that thought there a minute petal!

After a 'right Royal farce' concerning the potential Norfolk house rental, now forever renamed 'Not Buck Palace', we need to re-start our search!

It's been 5 whole weeks of being messed around and let's be brutally honest about it, we are so relieved it's come to an end, not surprised but also rather annoyed! All those weeks 'poof' gone, when we could have been applying for something else. Time wasted is never great is it? Honestly, I think had the agent not held our holding deposit we'd have exited sooner!

What a bloody muddy puddle!

Also, what utterly rubbish communication between the agent, us and the estate of many (too many) trustees! The middle man thing never works well does it?

Anyway, we were just a few hours away from confirming the business income via the accountant when they pulled the rug from under us! We were entirely more happy than we should have been. Oddly, we were kind of expecting it, so I wanted to crack open a bottle of our dwindling stash of champagne in celebration! I guess we felt rather held to ransom in the end, as we couldn't withdraw without loosing the holding deposit but they could! Them withdrawing? Perfect. It brought the whole sorry saga to an end.

Hum.

The Norfolk house ticked many of our boxes yes, but it is typically an Estate home, neglected and tired! The way they acted you'd have thought we were going to be moving in with the family!

A pretty house but it truly is no castle folks and anyway, it was the garden I fell in love with! The house didn't make a lot of sense without a some pretty pennies spent on it. That took a while to sink in. It would have required investment and lots of care, it would have gotten both from us.

The farce started with an initial viewing with the agent who was just 19! Lovely girl but very inexperienced. Then we met again at the house with a representative from the estate to ensure we passed muster and didn't have four heads! It was then we realised it belonged to Lord Whatshisface. At that point we should have shrunk back into our place in lowly society eh!

Never!

This wasn't just about affordability, although we are not in the habit of renting what we can't afford! It was clearly also about 'fitting in'. I don't like fitting in and I don't want to! Thanks for the offer though!

We've unfortunately been hoodwinked by an estate more than once in our renting life. It's usually a battle of legacy maintenance issues and even this farm house is no different! Farmers are even less likely to save their ruins!

You'd think we'd have run for the hills eh!

I wish we had!

The rep was typically horsey and a tad bolshy to boot, snappy actually but I thought we had an understanding? I held nothing back and she was very happy. We spoke about moving in dates, soft referencing due to us only arriving back from France last summer and also the newish LTD company. The agent then called to say all good and they popped a 'let agreed' sign up.

We mentally packed up and moved in!

Not so fast!

It was a few days later when we received the paper application forms and we set about sorting all that immediately. 10 days later with no further communication I rang the agent to be informed they were switching to an AI referencing platform, due to being busy and or inefficient with referencing! You're not kidding! Our referencing to get our current rental took just an hour and then the agent came back to us within two days with a YES!

Okay then! I'm not a fan of AI but it's the way of the world now, so in for a penny, in for a pound.

It was by then a Friday afternoon and one look at the AI app chat box thing and we called it a Monday job!

It wasn't that easy to get done but I did mine and P did his all bar the company accounts. Getting there! Then they suddenly wanted 3 years verified accounts after we had already told both parties we only started the company last June!

Nevertheless, what we could offer after speaking with the accountant, was to migrate our accounts to his system, which also links to our bank accounts and he would write an income and expenditure report. This took a few meetings with him and a lot of extra hours uploading all the documents. P then went away for a week and it all stopped. When he got back he cracked on and we were just hours away from the report being generated, when we got an email saying 'the estate, felt we couldn't prove our income' and therefore they were withdrawing from the process!

Charming.

Actually what a blessing in disguise eh!

During the whole messy process, time went by and we kept having to explain that what we were doing wasn't an overnight thing. Firstly we had to have a few lessons with the accountant in order to ensure everything went in the right boxes and also we scanned and uploaded hundreds of receipts and invoices! All this in between normal life and work. We informed the agent that it would take some time but once P was back from Canada we'd get about finishing it.

I truly believe this wasn't communicated to the estate and or they were just impatient! Probably both.

Instead they inferred that we were stalling and couldn't prove income?

Oh!

Just snap your fingers and it will be done eh!

After doing some industry standards research, the bank statements would have been acceptable to most agents to prove income! Also the standard is 12 months income proof for self employed not 3 years! We'd passed credit and previous landlord referencing but we felt they wanted the blood of a virgin, bless em!

Every decision had to be run through the 'too many trustees', all with differing opinions and further questions. It got messy very quickly and was more akin to a game of Chinese whispers than a simple referencing process!

I'd call the whole thing 'foggy'!

There was a grey mist descending and I think the universe had considered it's options for us and it felt we were on the wrong yellow brick road!

It did seem impossible to prove income to them in the way they wanted!

Anyway, we believed the estate was hoping for a tenant that was actually in a position to throw money at it! Money bags we are not, not yet anyway!

Tyre kickers!

Anyway, the agent offered us the deposit back, because she knew they had all wasted our time. That particular agent won't make any awards this year I'm sure!

Also, it does make me smile that someone's trust fund isn't earning and hasn't for a good while! There's such a thing as being too picky? I think so.

Hopefully, this won't happen again going forward as we are ready with verified accounts if required.

These estates, poor things are SUPER spooked by the new landlord/tenant rules! I mean imagine tenants having rights eh? No guarantees ! Shocking!

What they wanted was the afore mentioned money bags, who would happily pay a kings ransom and use all their savings, saving the bricks and mortar for Little Lord Whatshisface, then being carried out in a box at 104! Job done! Oh and the blood of that virgin might have sealed the deal!

Don't know any sorry!

Lol.

Tenants for life don't really suit the modern age, I don't think?

Also do up your own investments please landed gentry estates! I think offering us mere mortals expensive wrecks isn't cricket anymore!

Lucky escape I think!

Dx