John's Great Adventures in Real Estate!

I may have mentioned in previous articles that I used to live in Scotland. I was fortunate enough to live in that beautiful part of the world for a little over two years. Before I had decided exactly where in that country to settle I had on many occasions driven up from my home on the south coast of England to tour different parts of Scotland and eventually the area I chose was in my opinion the best for me a sort of compromise between location, affordability and availability of work.

On each of these exploratory drives north it was a 7or 8 hour drive to Scotland, however I was not looking at the southern part of the country, I preferred an additional 2-3 hours driving to the highlands of the north. I eventually bought somewhere to call home in Moray, a county situated in the north east and positioned between the cities of Inverness and Aberdeen.

Why I chose that spot, just that it felt right to me. Once I had chosen the area I then had to try and find the property. The house buying system in Scotland is I think unique to that place. A price is listed, the asking price, then potential buyers place bids above that price and the highest bid is normally the winning bid. Resulting in normally the seller getting a good bit more profit than the original asking price. Once the winning bid is accepted you have about 28 days to pay the monies owed, whether it be cash or through a mortgage type loan. It was soon clear to me that I could not compete with this system from so far away.

My property had been on the market for a short while before a price was agreed, in England the system is fix a price and accept a bid below the asking price hopefully not too far below. Once my home in England was sold I would move up to Scotland, renting for a while before buying and getting myself back on the housing market.

The person buying my place in the south was not after a new home for themselves but an additional home and so it turned out were not in any great rush. We agreed a completion date of 31 March of that year (2004). I drove north again a few weeks before this to secure a rental property to begin on the 1^st April. I had a long weekend in the area, looked at many properties and decided my next home however temporary it would be was to be a farm cottage a short distance outside the small city of Elgin. During this visit north I had stayed at a Bed and Breakfast (guest house), a small privately run farm house. Close by was a pub where I spent a few hours each evening with a drink, something to eat and studying my plans for the next day's activities. During one conversation with the people running the pub and enquiring after the job situation locally I had left a few details as to my soon to be availability. As I was driving south again I had a phone call to say the very pub I had been drinking in now had a vacancy as one of their chefs had quit the previous night. They were also willing to hold the vacancy for me for a couple of weeks until I returned. This meant that I now had a job as well as a place to call home as soon as I arrived in Scotland, as long as the house sale back in England went to schedule.

The buyer of my property decided that the end of March was not to his desire and requested it be put back by a week; I had already paid a deposit on the cottage in Elgin. My job in Southampton finished in the last week of March. I could handle a delay of one week but nothing more. Then the bombshell, the buyer was going to Australia for three weeks and wanted to wait until his return before completing, putting a date of the end of April as the completion. I had an option; I could legally pull out of the deal and put it back on the market. This however would take longer than the delay I was facing; also I had got a good price. Relisting it may bring in a lower one, was I willing to take that risk?

I will leave the tale there and complete this story another day!

Sources: - Personal experience

Personal knowledge.