The last few years for us as a family have been challenging to say the least, like most people we are really feeling the burn of the rising living costs, redundancy and expensive child care that leaves the average family for want of a better word stuffed!!
My husband was made redundant literally hours after the birth of our little E (hows that for timing) and after a rather traumatic birth i was left too ill to return to work quickly. We sort of muddled through with my husband doing his best to cover my little shop while looking for new employment himself.
He eventually found new employment but sadly around the time he started back to work my my mum became seriously ill and on her leaving hospital i became her carer. We had to make the difficult decision to sell my business as there is only so many hours in a day and with elderly care and childcare costs being so high it was just not cost effective. We therefore like many families are living on one wage trying our best to get by.
Anyway......to cut a very long story short and spare the gory details,we had to move mum from her home she had lived in for 48 years only weeks after moving home ourselves. Its been a roller coaster few years and the learning curves have been steep but somehow as a family we managed to hold it all together and I'm proud of us for that.
The time has now come though that something needs to change, i need to be able contribute to the home again whist still being the best mother,daughter and wife i can be.
Having re assessed we realised that the thing to do was to move again and release the equity created by the improvements we have made to our current house and then buy another home that needs improvements.
We have found in doing this we can pay 25% off our mortgage from the equity created by the improvements we have done on our current home which brings the monthly payment down on our next house, this is good at a time most of the other house bills are rising!
The key to getting the best price out of your home really is in the presentation, America definitely have the right idea it is normal practise when selling a home in the states to call in a home stager before they call an estate agent. I hope its something that will catch on over here as it definitely works that's why house builders use show homes as they are wise to the fact presentation sells. I think sadly most UK estate agents are stuck in their ways and will still reduce the asking price rather than suggest to a seller improvements they can make to achieve a good price.
We really needed to get the best price for our house to help our situation so i pulled out all the stops and styled our home ready to sell, and sell it did we got a good offer in just over a week after going on the market.
So our mortgage challenge begins we are determined to move and improve again a few times to eventually pay the mortgage off . The hunt for the new property was finally over today when we had an offer accepted on a property ironically two streets from our current one fairly identical just in need of TLC and as a result of needing work a staggering price difference from our own.
Hopefully I've inspired anyone hoping to sell in the spring to get out the paint brushes finish those half done jobs and edit your clutter to create space before calling the agents in, if you cant face it alone hire some help i promise it will be far more effective than a price drop later.
I'm really excited and cant wait to get to work on our new home next year and I am so pleased to have finally found a way to make it financially work as mum.
I have a feeling this may be a whole new blog in the making, watch this space x
Thought of the day..................... A home is where the people you love live.
