Even though the title of this post won’t help me, it is exactly what I should be repeatedly saying to Barely Husband right now. His apartment deal fell through and he’s scrambling to find a suitable rent property to move into asap.

From the outset everything seemed dodgy to me, but he had his mind and heart set on the super-spacious, new-build flat from private owners. They knocked the house that used to be at the property down and built four flats, which they rented out for a couple of years. Then they decided to sell the units.

Not exactly sell, as flats in the UK are on Leasehold (I’m not going to explain the historical reasons for that but it’s stupid for most countries, I know). Large property developers sort of  get around the law by leasing the property for 999 years with no ground rent, only getting something for the management of common areas.

Not these guys: the lease is short-ish AND there is a ground rent charge. The lease contract was just a draft and I was surprised the bank even agreed to the mortgage with the lack of documentation. After five months and a couple of thousand pounds spent on solicitor fees, the sellers decided they would not change the property register to include the parking space AS LISTED ON THE LEASE. Instead, they wanted to re-do the whole lease documentation to remove the parking space. Wow. Just wow.

They give the impression of not being the most honest people and Barely Husband took the financial hit and pulled out of the deal. He did the right thing, in my opinion. He never should have gone for it and he told me I was right. Oh well…

It should be easier to find a rental quickly so he can move out in the next couple of weeks. I don’t want to jinx it so fingers crossed. And I need a drink.

***Of course I had to go for Malory Archer from the extremely politically incorrect Animated series ‘Archer’.