Looking Out To Sea

Last week we tried and failed to become terrifying property barons¹ that would grind the faces of the poor. We didn’t get the place we were looking at — in fact, we were £5000 short. The bid that was accepted was 36% over the asking price, for those if you interested. We are disappointed but not too much.

Another place closes on Tuesday, so I’ll be phoning with our bid tomorrow. We’re a lot more excited about this, for some unquantifiable reason, but there’s nothing we can do to make it easier. This one has a lower asking price (it’s a smaller flat, after all) but in some respects it’s nicer — a more central location, bright airy views and so on.

We went to see the place again (the owners must be getting thoroughly sick of the sight of us by now…) and took some photos, some measurements, walked around and around, imagined where we would store everything. Tried to work out everything that we would need and see if this place would fit the bill. Nothing was insurmountable… except the fact of not knowing what to offer for it.

We’re currently looking at elegant graphs of figures to evaluate what do we bid? and what do we save? and what’s a silly percentage over the offer price? but not getting anywhere. It is heartening that we were so close last time (we were second place) but with only one data point we don’t know whether we lost out because the higher bid was unusually high, or predictably high or something else.

Maybe — just maybe — I’ll be able to post on Tuesday evening with the good news that we have a flat. I honestly hope so.