buying a house - part 1

I am at the moment in the process of buying a house and its going really well at the moment

I took two days off work to go house hunting and trekked round the various estate agents in my locality. After a viewing a few places, I found my house. By this I mean that when I walked into the place, it felt like it was mine. I put in an offer on Friday 2nd February which was accepted on the same day.

What I had meant to do, was make sure solicitors, mortgage and deposit were perfectly in place before I made the offer.

What I actually did was to have the mortgage applied for but not confirmed, no solicitor and only about 80% of the deposit available. So I ran round like a headless chicken getting a solicitor through http://www.easier2move.co.uk, transferring money from savings accounts and hoping that there wouldn't be any problems with the mortgage.

So how did this great idea pan out?

Well the estate agent wouldn't take the house off the market until they had the solicitors details. Which didn't arrive till the following Tuesday. The mortgage Approval In Principle although given, never arrived - I just told the estate agent and the solicitor the details (which subsequently changed anyway). The deposit and fees money is still in the process of being put together, although there has been a bit of a saga with one of my online savings accounts.

So far, so good.