How We Sold, Rented & Bought A House In Six Months

A tale of excessive possessions, house gawkers, umbilical cord clamps, Estate Agent fury, poorly timed mini breaks, tech obsessed husbands and much crying that should come with a trigger warning.

As I write this, it is Friday and I am sitting in the kitchen of our new house surrounded by boxes, a plaster dust covered glass drinks trolley, a crate of wall hung plates and the dog and cat who both have a permanent air of perplexity. My plants - which in the old house had plenty of room - are topping every available surface in the lime plaster stripped living room which bears more than a fleeting resemblance to a crack den. If a mutant zombie popped out from behind the French medicine cabinet, it would be a surprise to no one. But, I am feeling really quite happy.

It’s taken a while to get to this point. We first put our house on the market in July 2023, convinced that it would sell quickly and that we’d be buying our central York perfect property within months. Oh, how confident we were! We put it on the market then whizzed off to New York with the kids for a mini break. We’d have an offer by the time we’d returned, we said smugly. I’d had people messaging me for years saying oh, let me know if you ever want to sell your house, I’d love to buy it. I was a HOME INFLUENCER, FFS. The house would be gone in 60 seconds, surely. Nope. Not even close. Wishful thinking, bebe.

It took 15 months before we signed the sale papers and a whole lot of stress to get there. Not to mention the tidying. Good God, the tidying. Anyone who is selling their house will understand quite how brain screamingly monotonous it is keeping your home neat for prospective viewers at all times. Viewers who’d come, spend two hours (when I’d have to vacate family and pets from the house), even bring their relatives back in some cases, before deciding on an entirely different property in a completely different area. I’d say to the Agents, what’s their position? Can we check they can proceed before you book them in? Yes, yes, of course, they’d reply. But no, no they couldn’t. Hardly ever. But they wanted to look ‘just in case’. URGH. We once had someone send two groups of family members before flying over from Dubai and deciding that they didn’t want to live in York AT ALL. All this in a silent market, too. It made me want to cut off my own head most of the time. And theirs.

However, there was light at the end of this eternal tunnel of weekend trawlers and plenty of it - we sold and completed a week before Christmas 2024 (if you don’t move from a ten year home the week before Christmas then have you ever really lived?) and it’s been, in the words of the wanky, a journey. Downsizing is great and all that - we haven’t regretted a single second of this decision - but cramming a lifetime of accumulated possessions into a smaller space is just as hard as everyone told me. Yes, okay, you were right.

But as I sit here in our new house kitchen in the sunshine of the heatwave with a postcard view of York Minster from the front door and the rays hitting the courtyard, I KNOW that we are going to love it here. The boys already feel at home enough to leave their bastard golf clubs in the hall and trainers everywhere and have each already used about 353 towels in the bathroom. The animals have permanently positioned themselves looking out of the window barking (Buddy) and glaring (Flo) at every passer by. This house has GOOD vibes.

A house with a view that is worth the effort.

Anyway, to give you some idea of what’s been going down over the last year and a bit and explain how we managed to go through three houses in six months, I’ve done a brief summary of events. In the interests of comedy, mostly, which I can promise you is MUCH more palatable than my crying. Ha.

1. July 2023. Realised two years too late that we only had one child left at home and that if we sold our large detached house of ten years, we could buy something smaller and not have a mortgage. MIND BLOWN. Cleverly put house on market at exact time that the market dropped, interest rates went up and buyers disappeared quicker than Lord Lucan.

2. Signed with a very nice Estate Agent who swore that she would personally cover our sale every step of the way and assured us that it would sell within seven weeks, before resigning from her position of ten years a week later and going to work somewhere else. I subsequently fell out with everyone in her office and had to find a new Agent.

3. Threw caution to the wind and went with an Instagram friendly Estate Agent who took Instagram worthy photos. Regularly spent two hours tidying huge house and reallocating dog for every viewing before receiving DM messages from viewers post tour asking where my lights came from and if they could buy my furniture instead. FML.

   

   ‘Hello, yes I kicked you out of your house for two hours whilst I viewed but I didn’t want to buy it, I just wanted to look at your sofa and see if you wanted to sell it. Okay, bye’.

4. Came to the realisation that it didn’t matter WHO was selling my house, they were never going to be as efficient as me and I was always going to fall out with them. Was overwhelmed by the lack of urgency displayed by anyone but me and regularly spent time fuming about this fact.

5. Eventually sold house 15 months later for less than it was originally on for thanks to a rubbish market, rubbish interest rates, mostly rubbish Agents and people who didn’t really want to live on a main road but who decided to view anyway because they’d seen our house on Instagram and fancied a look.

6. Decided with our buyers that a five week completion date the week before Christmas was EASY PEASY. Started to prepare to move. Felt smug after filling two large skips with excess detritus from the cellar and garage but omitted to edit any home accessories.

7. Recruited packers due to lack of time. Packed all the excessive home accessories that needed to go to charity shop instead of taking them there. Paid for removal of these items.

8. Attempted to ‘edit’ memory items that I had stored for 23 years, including but not limited to every picture my children had ever drawn, copies of every time any of my family had appeared in a newspaper, babygrows I didn’t even recall them wearing, endless terrible school ceramics, every baby book ever owned, two full storage bags of teddy bears and umbilical cord clamps. Failed dismally, packed them in boxes and paid for removal.

   

   Every newspaper appearance from every family member. I think my intolerance with Estate Agency is borne from the fact that I used to work at one.

9. Completion scheduled for 21 December. Found great city centre rental house, forced to sign rental contract BEFORE we exchanged sale contracts else we would lose the house. Panicked it would all go wrong and we’d have to pay mortgage and rent at the same time for the next 600 years.

10. Arranged removals for 16 December, predicted to take two days. Told husband I didn’t need him for removal process due to the fact I work better alone and he cannot be relied upon for efficiency so he stayed in Manchester all week with daughter. Cue millions of messages asking ‘but where is your husband to help?’. Held back from telling them how the one time I asked my husband to take responsibility by booking holiday flights, he booked the wrong month and we didn’t realise until the week before. If you want something done properly, etc etc etc.

11. Didn’t exchange contracts until the day of removal. Didn’t exchange contracts until the Togo sofa was on the lorry READY TO DEPART. Almost fainted with trauma. Cried a lot on the phone to husband.

    

    Togos on van, hadn’t even exchanged contracts.

12. Underestimated amount of stuff I owned. Actually took five men working 12 hours a day for three days.

13. Was so overtired that I got the flu but stoically soldiered on. Ate Five Guys for dinner four days on the trot.

14. Moved into great city centre rental house after surviving for five days on Lemsip Max Day & Night and had to wean myself off it. Signed year long contract with a nine month break clause in case we found a house to buy.

15. Husband returned from Manchester wheeling his mini suitcase behind him to a fully set up new home. Asked him to bring back champagne; he brought back something that wasn’t champagne. It wasn’t Cava, cremant or Prosecco, even. I don’t even know what the fuck it was. Cue more crying and accusations of useless husbandry.

16. Realised that living in the city centre meant that we could walk to the coffee shops, restaurants and go to the pub three doors down for Quiz Night without having to get buses, taxis or drive anywhere. Also realised that we could get Deliveroo and Uber Eats. Realised that city centre living was, in fact, the dream.

17. Settled into city living. Within eight weeks, we found the perfect house to buy behind the one we were renting that was within budget and the perfect size. Had offer accepted, broke news to kids that there was no room for a golf net in the courtyard.

18. Whilst the sale went through, we assessed and planned the new living situation which was 3,500 sq ft less than the previous house. Decided with confidence that living with two downstairs rooms rather than the four we had previously was going to be an actual piece of piss.

19. Started to cut down what I owned with a vengeance in preparation for move. Properly edited possessions in a vaguely obsessive fashion. Donated half of owned home accessories to the charity shop, sent teddies off to The Teddy Trust, sold furniture on Facebook Marketplace (risking own life at every door collection), skipped the kids school books and drawings and gave loads away to friends. Kept the umbilical cord clamps.

    

    Things I kept. Golf tee my husband gave me on first meeting, Charity Council badge from Island School Hong Kong and a childs umbilical cord clamp (not sure which one).

20. Decided that we would continue with our trip to Ibiza for three days which had been booked a year previous but coincided with us returning the day before we moved. Big mistake. Big. HUGE. Spent Removal Day in a post party daze.

21. Due to husband having pre scheduled post Ibiza day off, he was present for Monday Removal Day. Again, big mistake, etc etc etc. Stopped myself from punching/divorcing husband whilst he spent the majority of his time setting up the TV and his computer. Realised that if Buddy the dog was able to drive to the tip, he would have been more of an asset. Also realised that now we live in a smaller house, people can hear me shouting in the street.

22. Made the removal men gasp in awe at the entire lorry load less that they had to shift this time due to my efficient redistribution of belongings. Listened to them say ‘it seems like you’ve only just moved!’. Yes, alright.

    

    Boxes for DAYS.

23. Planned to live in one of the downstairs rooms until the building work commenced in September, using the second downstairs room for storing boxes. Did not realise that the amount of boxes, art and rugs STILL possessed would be so abundant that they’d overflow from this room. Cue more crying and slight hysterics.

24. Realised that I owned enough art to furnish a gallery. Refused to get rid of any of it.

25. Tried to get one of the Togo sofas up the stairs to the office but failed. Ignored family when they told me that I ‘would have to sell one’ and told them I would rather sell them first.

26. Realised that living in two downstairs rooms instead of four was not going to be an actual piece of piss when you have to use one as storage. Cried, admitted defeat and rebooked removal company to put the boxes, art and rugs into storage until work was done so that we were able to traverse a room.

27. Got irrationally stressed about handing back the rental house to the landlord after realising that the paint I used to touch up where I’d hung art was a different colour to what was already on the wall. Cue crying, again. Found a decorator to do it for me to save my sanity.

28. Shouted continuously at children for five days for leaving golf clubs in the hallway. Resisted the temptation to take both clubs and children to the tip.

29. Husband went back to work. PRAISE BE.

30. Got to Friday. Felt sufficiently recovered from Ibiza excesses to open a bottle of Whispering Angel. JOB DONE.

    

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