Good news...New problem

A few days after our meeting with Martyn I receive an email. The freeholder is willing to sell...For the right price. "What is the right price", I ask. "Not sure" replies Martyn, he says he'll get back to us. Having discussed it amongst ourselves our gut instinct (for what it's worth) is telling us it going to be around £450k, anymore & we feel that we be overpaying.

Martyn gets back to me, they want £500k & not a penny less. I send him an email back stating that we feel the freehold value is closer to £400k & attempt to hit him with some good reasons why. He's prompt & to the point in his reply & in a nutshell tells us to get real!

We up our offer to £450k & hope that the we can meet somewhere between - we're concerned about going too much over £450k for fear that the bank will value it either at £450k & leave us with a shortfall or maybe value it at less, hey for all we know they might value it at £300k & then we'd be really stuffed!

Marytn comes back to us, they'll sell for £480k. We agree & have a formal offer accepted. We feel a small sense for victory. However, our jubilation at securing our first freehold, is short lived when it suddenly occurs to us that we are going to need to find a lot more dosh. Time to have a serious look at our finances.