Settlement on the flat in Docklands is due tomorrow afternoon.
The conveyancing solicitor sent me an email late-ish on Thursday afternoon telling me how much I needed to pay. She did not include the loan that has been arranged so I wasn't sure how much I actually needed to transfer to the law firm's trust account.
I decided to transfer the whole amount, on the assumption (apparently correct) that any over-payment would be transferred back to me.
I rang the bank. The person I spoke to increased my daily transfer limit to the maximum of $100k and said I could transfer the money over 4 days. I didn't really have 4 days. Then I would need to go into a branch and sort it out there.
It was too late in the afternoon to do it on Thursday. The bank branches open at 9:30. I was going to have to take Friday morning, at least, off work. Realistically, the whole day. I'm supposed to be off next week but there are things that need to be done before I disappear for two weeks. I'll have to go in on Monday instead. Sigh!
So I trundled into the branch in town on Friday morning. The bank people were very, very cautious. I had to ring the solicitor's office in front of them to double check their bank details, even though I had done it the afternoon before, prior to ringing the bank. They double and triple checked absolutely everything. Then having gone through it all with one person, it was all checked again by another person. Then we had to go to the tellers' counter to put the money through and yet another person checked that I wasn't being coerced in any way.
When we were all as certain as we could possibly be that my money wasn't going to head off to the Canary Islands without me - then the money was transferred to my solicitor's trust account.
It took about an hour and a half. Absolutely no point in heading into work. So I rewarded myself with a toasted sandwich and a hot chocolate for brunch and then went and bought myself a new TV. Smallish, because I need mostly small things in my new small flat. It doesn't strictly count as a tiny flat - but most people would think it very small at 58 sq m. My dining table is coming with me, as are two quite large dressers/shelves. But mostly I am replacing large things with smaller versions.
I am cautiously optimistic that settlement will go ahead as planned, although transferring the money on Friday for a Monday settlement was pushing the time a bit. Neither my conveyancer nor my mortgage broker seem to be in the least bit worried.
I do wonder how people who are buying $2m properties manage with the payments!
We had a brief but quite intense rain storm on Friday afternoon. I watched it rolling in from the west
No comments:
Post a Comment