Friday 18 December 2015
Sunny and warm 18 degrees
I am always edgy until I have my bags packed. OH insisted on making the most of the beautiful morning so we went to town, bought more surprisingly cheap ink cartridges and went around the lake. It was like a mill pond with just an occasional diving plop from a Grebe. At the bridge, thousands of small fish were funnelling through the gap from the stream into the lake. Tiny, silver flashing bodies about three inches long.
Back home and lunch and then I gritted my teeth and looked in the wardrobe. The problem I have is that the majority of my clothes are Summer clothes. We go on holiday in the Summer and I have lots of choice of pretty dresses and skirts and tops. In the Winter I tend to hibernate under jumpers and jeans. My legs haven't seen tights in years. I dug around and found some rather strange cream coloured knitted ones and some mustard yellow ones. I earnestly hoped that I would not eat myself out of my somewhat close fitting two pairs of jeans over the festive period.
I had just started to stuff things into my case when the phone rang. OH got to it first. It was the agent and it was apparent that the conversation was not going well. He ended it by saying that 'it kills the sale for me'. Apparently the agency had taken the decision to place the property in Windermere for auction. This came completely out of the blue and we were absolutely dismayed. OH was fuming. We rang back and rang back and were given the run around and finally managed to get the telephone number of a director. Andy, who we spoke to yesterday and had asked for proof of funds, and assured us that our offer would be a runner, was not even in work today and therefore when he said he would ring up the owners and get back to us, was not being straight.
OH got through to the director and I was glad it was him on the phone and not me, because I have never heard anyone so rude and arrogant. I would not have been as calm as OH.
The director told us that
1. our offers were ridiculous
2. they had wasted a WHOLE week with this negotiation
3. we knew that they would not take less than 220k (we didn't)
4. it had always been the intention to go to auction if 220k wasn't reached (very surprise news)
5. we hadn't even seen the property
6. if we were real, we could buy it at auction
7. to stop talking if we wanted to listen to what he had to say
It appears that there is very little competition for Cumbrian Properties in Windermere. This is an agency which also covers lettings, and is currently showing the property in which we are interested, with very poor photos and one crap review. This is the agency which, during the terrible floods in Cumbria, raised its admin fee from 200 to 600 pounds
http://www.mirror.co.uk/
We then did some Googling and discovered that the property had actually been on sale since June 2014 at the price of 250k and not since August 2015 as we had been told by the agency. The auction site said that it had income of 18000k and forward bookings. It had income of just of 11k and no forward bookings at all.
David Hogarth of Cumbrian Properties. I officially name you as a complete twat.
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