The road to unconditional

I know buying a house is a little different depending on where you are in the world, so I thought I'd write a bit about what I'm going through at the moment and what it all means.

On Tuesday the 13th of November, I put in a conditional offer, which was accepted, and I had 10 working days (ie, until 4pm on the 27th of November) to satisfy all conditions or pull out of the deal.

My conditions were to have satisfied:

• Finance
• Registered valuation
• LIM
• Building report

Finance is mostly sorted- I was pre-approved by the bank, but they needed the registered valuation to finalise it. It takes ages for them to cross all the T's and dot all the lower-case J's so I'm still waiting to have that confirmed. 

I emailed 5 companies to do a valuation, last Wednesday. Three got back to me. I went with the first one, which happened to be the cheapest (which is not at all cheap! I was shocked by the price!) and because they said they could get it done quickest. Well, they went to the house to do the valuation last Thursday, and she phoned to let me know what value she'd put on the property (a little above what I'd offered, which was a relief!) and said that the bank, and I, would get the report possibly on Friday, but Monday at the latest. In the end, the bank received it on Monday, and I received mine on Wednesday. I was not impressed, especially as they'd dated the invoice Monday, and I have until next Monday to pay. Definitely won't use them again, although the valuation appeared to be quite thorough. 

I ordered the LIM online on Friday, and it was ready to be picked up on Wednesday before lunch. It was $300, which is a lot of money to pay for a few pieces of paper, but it cleared up a few questions I had, and I couldn't see any issues with it. 

The building inspection was done this morning, and the guy phoned me this evening to have a quick chat about it ahead of sending the report. Basically, the house is pretty solid, has a few minor things (roof needs repainting which I knew and had budgeted for) and one thing that I'll need to get the vendor to fix (a leaky tap in the basement which is causing the damp and, really, is something they should have fixed a long time ago, but I've already suspected the vendor doesn't really know much about houses nor do they care about anything beyond the superficial). 

By next Tuesday, I need to tell the vendor whether I've satisfied all conditions. So far, it's looking pretty good! Fingers crossed that the building report looks all okay (my dad, who is in the industry, will look over it and let me know what's up with it) and the bank say the final yes to the mortgage!

Hopefully next week, I'll be posting with some really good news!