Well, what can we say? The UK house purchase system just plain and simply doesn't work. It needs an overhaul and it needs it NOW!! We've been trying to move for a while now. Compared to some people we know of, our problems have been minimal too!

So, back at the beginning of August we decided we were going to move. For various reasons that we won't go into here we decided we were going to move back to my home town where my family is, which also happens to be by the sea and is a generally nice place to be. So far so good. So we get our money in order, found out what we can afford and have a bit of a look around and being the good citizens that we are find somewhere we want but figure there's no point in going any further until we have someone to buy our place.

For the benefit of anyone reading this outside the UK who maybe doesn't know how things work over here. You put your house up for sale while miraculously finding the place of your dreams, all parties agree on purchase and sale prices and things are handed to the conveyancors / solicitors / lawyers along with a couple of thousand pounds in fees and sit back and wait. At the end of roughly a three month process involving many, many letters, phone calls and often heated debates (not to mention, often more fees) you "exchange contracts", then in theory a couple of weeks later you move in and live happily ever after (can you see where this is headed yet??!!)

Well, there's a flaw in this system and that is that no-one is legally bound to anything whatsoever until the stage where you exchange contracts with each other. What this effectively means is that any party, anywhere along a chain of properties can simply change their minds for any reason whatsoever and just wake up one morning and decide "to hell with it, I don't want this house any more".

So anyway, our process goes well, our house flies off the shelf (it's a good price, lovely place and a very desirable location) and we get a buyer within about 2 weeks. Great, we go back to the place we want to buy, it's still available, we put an offer in and it's agreed. Great. Off we go. Well, we do all the stuff we have to do but the first that I noticed was that our "Cash buyer" is sending round a surveyor for their mortgage. Uh?? Since when do cash buyers need mortgages?? Oh well, misunderstanding on someone's part and we carry on. Bottom line, roughly six weeks and £2,000 or so later we get a phone call from the estate agents and I'm thinking great, we've exchanged contracts (this was the day we were due to do this). Sadly not! The buyer had decided he no longer wanted to purchase the house. Arrrgggghhhhh!!!!

What makes these people tick?? So there we are, back to square one with absolutely nothing we can do about it. The buyers never even had the courtesy of giving us a reason. If it were any reasonable person they'd at least have been apologetic about the amount of money they'd cost everyone but no, I guess we just ended up with a dick head. Plain and simple.

Anyway, things are progressing along again, we've had quite a lot of people viewing the house again but as of yet no concrete offer. I can feel it coming though, lots of viewings this week, even the same people coming back more than once so surely not long now

So why the blog entry? Well, apart from a plain old good rant, it means there's nothing arcade related going on whatsoever. We had to make our house a bit less cluttered to try and make it more saleable so all the arcade games are gone. All the repair gear is boxed away, in fact, everything is positively boxed up and empty around here! A good friend of ours has been kind enough to store all of the games for us but, things can get a bit boring within no projects to get stuck into!!

And with the spare room turned into a guest room in true show home style, my office has been relegated to the garage and I have to say, it's no fun sitting at a desk working in a cold garage all day long in November. Especially since the days are starting to get cold now.