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Diary - Last 10 Entries

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Sun 27th, March We're drawing near the end…
Thu 5th, May Well we've been back in England…
Thu 28th, July It's been a while since the…
Tue 30th, August We've booked our flights for…
Mon 7th, November My birthday was fun. I bit chaotic,…
Wed 4th, January We had a great Christmas. Mandi…
Fri 5th, May

We're married!!

The…

Thu 11th, May

I have loaded some pictures in…

Sat 3rd, March We recently spent a couple of…
Mon 9th, July Hi,

I don't know if…
Hi,

I don't know if anyone is reading this anymore, but here's an update on our lives anyway.

Some of you will already know that we've been looking for a place to buy for a while now. Earlier this year we tried to buy a flat in a tower block in Charlton, but we couldn't get a mortgage on it. There were various reasons, but basically after a lot of hunting around, the only offer we had involved a 20% deposit, which we couldn't afford. We needed to save up some money, well, pay off our overdrafts and loan. We moved out of our spacious 2 bedroom flat into a cheap bedsit (a room with a bathroom). Most of our stuff went into storage in a friends garage (thanks Catalina). It's cosy, but we're quite enjoying it. The only problem is the neigbours upstairs play there music a bit loud, but thankfully their stereo is too rubbish to be too loud, and it's usually only during the day. We have our own little bit of garden, which is awesome, as we can barbecue, which is particularly handy given the diminutive size of our kitchen area.

Anyway, Mandi got a job as a secretary in a local estate agents to help bring in some extra cash. It's actually worked extremely well. Not only has she made a who load of new aloe customers, but she's got free (and honest) property advice. All the properties they sell, are way out of our price range, that could just be something to do with the area though, so that wasn't much help with our search for a place to live.

On a side note, my Grandad gave up driving recently, and was trying to sell his car. It's a lovely little Skoda Fabia 1.2. he's had it 3 years,and only done about 3,000 miles. Our Astra was getting to the point where we were probably going to have to spend some money on it, and we thought this seemed like a good opportunity to get a car we trust not to breakdown. It's going to be a bit tough paying for it, but not a bad as if we'd had to get a loan. Thanks Granddad. =)

So it dawned on Mandi last week that we should get started on finding a place to live if we want to move into somewhere of our own before Christmas (and before the rent on our bedsit runs out). We trawled the web looking for places that we could afford, but that weren't in tower blocks, or retirement villages (there's some really nice retirement places). We found a selection and Mandi managed to make appointments for 4, for Saturday (the one just gone). I guess the demand for property at this level is massive, as not many agencies were very bothered about organising viewings for us.

Saturday morning we went to see Lisa (who runs the Financial company that shares and office with the estate agents that Mandi works in), I'm going to write a web-site for her business, and we wanted to ask her about mortgages. We found out that we couldn't afford the monthly payments on any of the properties we had arranged viewings for. Mandi was telling Linda (who works in the estate agents) about our problem, she told her that a property had come onto their books Friday night, after Mandi had left, that we could afford. The lease on the property was quite short and the renewal fee was going to be quite a bit, but that was covered by a reduction in the price of the flat. In short it was a bargain as it would be worth more with the lease renewed.

We went to see it that afternoon. It's just around the corner, literally, from our last flat. It's basically the same size as one floor of our last flat, so it's squeezed in. It's a great little place. The bedroom is very small, but we'll cope with that, and we have a paved area out the front for more barbecues. =)
Mandi spoke to Lisa again when she got to work and she thinks we'll have no trouble mortgaging it with enough over the top to pay for the lease renewal, after which we can re-mortgage to get a better deal.  We put in an offer straight away and it's already been accepted!!!! So we should be in our own place before Christmas, which is good, because Connie and Rod are coming over for a couple of weeks.

So after all the grief we had with the flat in Charlton, it's all working out for the best.


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