Full steam ahead!...

This is it! Get excited cos it's happening!
Following the My world is in your hands... post I made a couple of weeks ago I finally have a response. The mortgage company were very easy to work with. Their response was swift and concise. (I think the 1.5% they load on my mortgage is their motivating factor!)

Housing associations on the other hand are another story all together. Don't get me wrong. They were quick to cash the cheque I sent them to pay the administrative charges but after that communication seemed to cease.

Phone call after phone call drew up nothing but dead ends. The lady I had addressed the permission to sublet form to was on maternity leave, yet her mail was not being read!

Then the forms had to be scanned and submitted to a different lady in the same office, electronically. Unfortunately she was struck down with illness for a week and her colleagues were unable to log in to her section of the computer system.

Well I rang the number for the umpteenth time this morning and she was better! But out of the office. I pleaded that someone please phone her and ask that she contacts me today. 16:45 arrived and I made a last ditch attempt and rang again.

She was back! And had been all afternoon. However, she was now on the phone and couldn't take a call. You can sense my frustration. I waited for 24 minutes with Shania Twain trying desperately to sooth my temper on the hold music.

We now have permission to sublet! The mortgage company are on board, the housing association are on board. I rang Jill at Pinnacle Letting Company and must have sounded like a small child. I was so relieved and excited all at the same time.

Some of our stuff has already gone through various means. Freecycle, as always, has come up trumps. I get most of my furniture from freecycle and now I've sent it back to the freecycle ether. Bonus being I don't have to hire a van to get rid of stuff!

One last push and I hope to be out by next week end. After throwing a feather duster around for a bit and drafting in a carpet cleaning friend, I should be ready for pictures to be taken and the property finally on the rental market by the end of the month.

Emotions are running high at the moment. Relief, anticipation, excitement, fear ... Everything. But it's all moving forward!

Train me up Scotty!...

The first 6 months of our Vagabonding adventure will (hopefully) be a slow introduction to travel and adventure.

Kerry and I have been skiing and snowboarding for the last two seasons, but we always feel that a week is never enough. We love nothing better than that feeling at the beginning of the week when you grab your gear and head off to the lift!

So we have decided to start vagabonding up in the snowy French Alps. And be gainfully employed! Applications for chalet hosts are taken all year round and in preparation we booked on the Natives Chalet Cookery Course last night.

The course helps to prepare hopeful chalet hosts with, not only general cooking skills, but more specific tasks and problems that occur on a Ski Season. From the differences in cooking at altitude (Water may not boil at some heights!) to laying a table or cooking a fabulous afternoon cake. All the while making sure the work is done efficiently and effectively to enable more time on the slopes without compromising service.

With no official service work (Waiting tables, bar work, hospitality etc) on our CV's we both felt that we would need to complete a chalet course to prepare us for the potential season ahead. Having stayed in a Ski Chalet before we kind of know what to expect but I'm sure when it comes down to the nitty gritty we will thank the course instructors after!

We are now £1000 lighter and will be taking a week out of work in July to spend the week at St Teresa's School in Dorking. The course is instructed by past Seasonnaires and if I know anything about seasonnaires its that the evenings will, undoubtedly, be ladled with mulled wine and Camel cigarettes.

Natives also offer a very good support system to help us gain the vital chalet host place we are looking for and will help with everything from CV structuring to introductions to recommended companies.

We've now got a mini Holiday booked which will hopefully be useful and fun as well as us gaining a new 'string to our bow' as such.

My world is in your hands...

Not all letting agents are bad guys after all! I had a few agents round earlier this week with mixed impressions. Some just didn't seem interested in what I had to say. As if they were going 'through the motions' with it all. This isn't a good way to start, considering how scared I was about letting her out. I think anybody would be pretty scared about letting complete strangers come and stay in your house ... or more aptly your home.

One evening I was minding my own, trawling the internet with the obligatory Facebook page open as the first tab. I was flitting back and forth reading travel blogs, twitter posts and generally surfing when a notification popped up on Facebook. An old friend had messaged me a whole ream of paragraph upon paragraph of text!

He went on to say that he didn't usually read blogs but mine took his fancy, he had travelled for 6 months in his late teens and 'loved the word Vagabonding' (I do too!) he really enjoyed my writing (which I think is terribly lumpy!) and it was a big compliment to hear that he was eager for more.

Then the surprise. He had worked in lettings and was willing to exchange some advise and information in exchange for me continuing my blog (more compliments). But then he noticed that his firm were already coming round to meet me. Not just his firm but his Mum!

Jill from The Pinnacle Letting Company was the last of the agents I'd scheduled in for that day and I was pretty on edge after the other firms performance, but Jill was brilliant. We spent a good 45 minutes chatting and discussing all of the questions I had. It felt like nothing was too silly or complex to ask and I knew there and then that, however hard the others had tried (or not!), I would definitely leave my flat in Jill's care. 

She was able to give a brilliant rate and a massive flood of relief washed over me. It was on! Any doubt I had about letting my flat out had gone. The race has started! I hope to have tenants in there by 1st May 2012. Only 2 months! And there is still mountains of things to do.

Jill emailed over the proposed Shorthold Tenancy Agreement (which the other agents still haven't done 2 days later!) and all of the other documents so I could compile a 'Permission to Let' proposal to both the Housing Association and Mortgage lender. And here I am, tired but every i has been crossed and every t dotted. All I need now is a couple of stamps (The one thing you miss most from your Mums purse when you leave home!) and I am done.

Then this whole thing is in someone else's hands. I have done my best. Put together comprehensive proposals, sourced the best letting agency in Horsham if not Sussex and paid (admin fees for Housing Association) for the privilege of them to make the decision.

Either the Mortgage company or the Housing Association could say no. The only option then is to sell her, which I'm really not keen on. But there we go ... C'est la vie.