Sold! Again. Almost.

Two weeks ago, we had a phone call at around 6:30 on Saturday night. It was one of our real estate agents wanting to bring some people through. Now. Apparently they were at his office, ready to sign a contract on another place, and saw our listing in the window.

After a hasty clean, Kylie and I packed Jonah into the car and went for a drive. After what seemed like an eternity, the first call came through. “They want to know whether you have ADSL2″. A promising sign. A few phone calls later and we had an offer, conditional on a couple of things. First – the deck, mentioned in Buying and Selling. They also wanted confirmation that the other major renovation – raising the house and building in underneath – had also been approved.

Another few frantic days of checking things with Council and we had a list of what had been approved. There was something in 1967 called “Dwelling Addition”, but Council don’t keep detailed records for that long, so we didn’t know whether that was the correct one. Back to the buyer with an offer of “it could be it, but we can’t be sure. We’re not going to go through the whole certification process for something that may already have been approved, so make us an offer”. At this point we just wanted the whole sorry mess behind us. The offer they came back with was more than we were expecting, and enough to afford the house we want, so we were happy. But it still depended on the deck being approved. More uncertainty.

Monday night and Tuesday morning were probably the most stressful 18 hours of my life. Not knowing anything much about building, some of the notes on the plans were a little scary. But the inspector turned up around lunchtime and finally, thankfully, approved it.

So, all going to plan. The sale will go ahead, and we’ll be homeless on July 13. We’re hoping to be able to push the purchase of the new house through pretty quickly, but it looks like we’ll be living with Kylie’s parents in Ipswich for a week, or two, or three. I wonder if I can arrange any extended work trips during July.