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We have wanted to move house for a pretty long time now, and hopefully, it will finally happen in the next year or so.
The area we live in isn’t great and there is a lovely village nearby where some of our family lives and my husband grew up and we would really love to move there. I really think our quality of life would improve so much if we moved there. Beautiful places to walk would pretty much be on our doorstep, so dog walks, in particular, would be much nicer, Ava would be able to play with her cousins more often (post-Covid of course) and we could enjoy more time at the lovely local pubs and park.
Moving house obviously involves a lot of planning and it can be very stressful. So I want to be as organised as I can and do what we can to reduce the stress of the experience when the time comes, both practically and financially.
It’s been over ten years since we bought our house now so lots has changed with mortgages and other moving costs. So I’ve been looking into them so that I have an understanding of it all and know what we can afford, as I really don’t want to just leave it to my husband and I want to be able to prepare my finances until then.
When it comes to things like mortgages I don’t have a clue, to be honest, so I need something that is clear and easy to understand. I’ve been doing lots of research and looking at Mortgage Calculators – I used the UK Mortgage Calculator which showed me how much more we would be paying each month compared to now, based on the price of houses we are looking at.
It was really helpful to see how much we could afford and makes it easier to see how we can plan ahead for that and to see if it’s a realistic budget for us. I’ve also learnt what fixed-rate and tracker mortgages are and what ‘amortisation’ means!
The mortgage calculators on MortgageCalulator.info are really simple to use – you can just put in a house price and your deposit amount and it will fill in the rest for you based on what it usual and then it will calculate what your monthly repayments will be. It’s cool because it means I can see what repayments would be if we found a more expensive house that we loved and makes it easier to see whether we could afford it.
It was also helpful to read that the BBC reported that the minimum deposit required by lenders during the COVID-19 crisis, rose to 15% in August 2020. That’s obviously not a good thing, but it is good to be aware of it, although hopefully, it shouldn’t affect us too much with having some equity in this house.
Of course, there are lots of other costs to moving house as well, such as estate agents fees, removal van hire and lots more, so I have been researching those as well so that we are prepared.
We want to choose the best local estate agent that has a personable approach so they are easy to deal with as well as being the best value for money, so I’ve been looking for recommendations in local Facebook groups and places like that.
I also need to look into whether I’ll be able to go on the mortgage as someone who is self-employed as it is likely to be more difficult without the fixed contract from being in an employed role.
Decluttering is probably the most important thing we need to do right now. We have so much stuff and apart from the fact I don’t want to take all of the rubbish with us, it also makes the house look a mess and the rooms smaller than they are. I’ve been doing quite a lot of clearing out over the last year or so, but there’s still so much to go through. A cluttered home never feels good, but even less so when you’re trying to prepare for a move.
It can also be a good idea to take some furniture out of your house, as well as packing up some toys and personal items that we want to keep. This will make everywhere easier to keep clean and tidy as well as look better for potential buyers and allow them to imagine themselves and their own belongings there.
If we can afford to store some of our stuff somewhere or find someone nice we know with room in their garage then we’ll do this as we have some lovely furniture we still want to keep but that doesn’t fit perfectly anywhere in our house.
It also means that when it comes to actually moving house it should make it less stressful as some things will already be packed up and also cheaper too if we use a removal company.
After we’ve done lots of decluttering we’ll need to give everywhere a really good deep clean, so that it looks and feels better as well as making it easier to keep on top of before any viewings. We obviously clean regularly but we don’t do really deep cleans where we move all of the furniture to clean underneath very often at all!
I really want (and need) to hire a carpet cleaner to use on our cream lounge carpet – it gets regular hoovers, but we’ve had it for years now, and of course, that room gets used a lot so it isn’t looking great. It’s a good quality carpet though so it just looks dirty, not old, so I think it should come up well.
We obviously don’t want to spend a ton of money on redecorating the whole house before we move but there are definitely some areas that need repainting. We had a leak through the kitchen ceiling a while ago now so that needs redoing, and the kitchen and dining room walls need doing too – it made such a difference repainting our lounge and it feels so much nicer now.
Plus there are little improvements we can make cheaply, particularly in the bathroom so it looks much better overall.
I worked really hard last summer during the first lockdown to massively improve our garden, so it is looking much better now (although it has been a bit neglected again since it got cold!). So I need to get it looking its absolute best so that it is easy to maintain and looks nice to prospective buyers.
Some of the fences REALLY need replacing which will make a huge difference and it will be a lot nicer for us whilst we are still living here too.
Last year I bought a nice table and chairs, and we have a decent patio area so it would be good to prettify that whole area a bit so anyone coming round can imagine themselves sat there with a glass of chilled white wine on a hot summer evening! And meanwhile, that can be me instead.
There are lots of things we need to to do ready to sell our house and then move, so I’m making an effort now to be as prepared as possible so we don’t find the perfect house yet are nowhere near ready!
This is a collaborative post.
Welcome to Birds and Lilies! I'm Lou: mother, blogger and freelance writer. This is my lifestyle blog, where I talk about motherhood, infertility and IVF, beauty, my love for food and wine, as well as my thoughts about stuff, and our real-life and travel adventures.
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