Our downsizing challenge is still going on. But things are much harder than we first thought.
Firstly it seems like many people are doing something similar. It’s so hard to sell anything on eBay now and their fees are beyond ridiculous nowadays. People are just less willing to spend. We have sold quite a few things such as the Nintendo wii and other electronics, not to mention furniture, but they have sold for much less than expected. We do feel a lot lighter already so every cloud I guess.
Another major problem we are having is with City Centre landlords. It seems that they are less and less helpful. Many of the apartments we have wanted to view have gone whilst we are waiting for the letting agents to get back to us with an appointment. The problem is that letting agents have to liaise with tenants to gain access. While waiting for access we are seeing the apartment we are waiting to view being removed from the market. Boggles the mind as someone must have gained access to see it or more scarily accepted the lease without ever stepping foot in the property.
It also seems that due to the recession and squeeze on incomes people are snapping up the cheaper property. These maybe fellow downsizers or those simply unable to afford city centre property. The prices have gone up around 200% in Manchester since we lived there around 5 years ago. We used to rent a lovely 2 bedroom house with gardens and driveway 20 minutes walk from the city centre. It was very cheap. It’s no longer very cheap.
We are also having major delays with the sale of the car. The car was on a private plate. We changed this back to its original plate with the DVLA but we haven’t yet received the updated V5 document, so we are unable to legally transfer ownership. This means we cannot list the car for sale. Ideally I would have liked to have sold it by now but the DVLA are taking things really slowly.
We have a huge dilemma now. Our lease states that we must give one months notice to vacate the property and that notice must be issued the day before the rent is due. This is on the 14th. So if we don’t find anywhere by the 13th of this month we are delayed by another month. This is an ongoing problem as letting agents seem to be very flakey at the moment. They just won’t commit to letting us view property, never mind sign a lease. Nightmare.
So we are now delayed. We need to sell the car and find an apartment. Both are beyond our control and both are being held up.
This also means that I can’t sell key pieces of furniture such as our sofas as we don’t know how much longer we will need them for. Not ideal.
I’ll try to get some pictures up of all the things we have got rid of. It’s a lot. Probably a transit van worth of stuff sold, donated and skipped. Feels very liberating.
