A spanner in the works

After a long and weary Friday viewing houses and having put in our offer on the Burton Bradstock property (see previous post) we went back to our guest house in Weymouth. A few minutes later my mobile rang. It was Christine, one of the estate agents we’d met earlier that day. She knew the property that she’d shown us earlier wasn’t for us and had gone back to her office wondering what else she could suggest. One of her colleagues asked ‘what about the house you went to see yesterday?’ It was a brand new instruction and Christine had only seen and valued it the day before. The house was empty and normally they wouldn’t let anyone see it so early in proceedings but she knew that we were returning to Reading the next day so called to offer us the chance to see it. The description sounded intriguing so we said yes, making an appointment to see it late the next afternoon.

In the morning we visited Abbotsbury Subtropical Gardens (HHA/Christie’s Garden of the Year 2012). What a lovely place it is and looking particularly good at this time of year (end of May) as most of the rhododendrons were in full bloom. A long steep walk at the south end of the garden brings you to the top of the cliff overlooking Chesil Beach with the famous Abbotsbury swannery in the foreground and Portland in the distance. After we'd finished admiring the gardens we drove off to Burton Bradstock and had another look around. (Hm, no Orange/Tmobile/Virgin signal to be had). We attempted to have lunch at the Hive Beach Café but you obviously need to get there early on a sunny Saturday lunchtime as there was a very long queue, so we drove on to Bridport and ate there. As we were near the agent for the Burton Bradstock property we popped in to see if there was any news. There wasn’t.

So, back to Weymouth for our appointment to view the latest house in our quest. It was a fairly modern house towards end of a cul-de-sac in the Rodwell district of Weymouth. From upstairs you can see a bit of the beach on Weymouth Bay to the front and Portland Harbour and Portland Island to the rear. It has all the space we need, is in a quiet location yet just five minutes’ walk to the sea, ten minutes’ walk to Weymouth Harbour and just a little further to the shops.

And, whilst it needs quite a bit of updating, mostly cosmetic, it was well under budget. We also liked it a lot.

Time to head home to Reading. As we joined the new road – built due to the coming to Weymouth of the 2012 Olympic sailing events (more of that later) – Ian’s mobile rang. It was the estate agent of the Burton Bradstock house. Not surprisingly really, but our offer had been rejected. They’d had another higher offer but we were, however, the favoured buyers as our own home was already under offer and we wanted to move quickly. Would we consider increasing our offer? It was now late on Saturday afternoon and the estate agents would be closed on Sunday so we said we'd call back on Monday.

Oh dear. We really didn't think we would have to choose between two houses. Time for more serious thinking.