This is not the blog post I had planned for this week, but if you’re into real “behind the scenes” updates, this one is for you.
Spoilers: There’s NO art practice within this article, skip it if that’s what you came for.
As a regular reader, I’m sure you know that we’re relocating to a new city very soon.
If you follow me on social media, you have probably also seen that there’s been a slight bump in the road for our journey up the A1 to our new home.
If you missed my stories over on Instagram and Facebook, no fear, I’ll catch you up here…
Earlier this month we viewed a house that we loved, put down the holding deposit and passed all the vetting checks required for our tenant application to be approved.
The last email we had from the Letting Agent was that they were drawing up* the contract and expected our move in day to be 26th February.
So far, so normal. This is the same process I’ve been following for renting homes since I was 21 years old.
*Drawing up sounds very grand, we all know they pop a few details into an AST Agreement template.
Earlier this week we chased them for information on signing the contract, paying the final up-front monies and confirming when and where I’d need to collect the keys from.
Yesterday (19th February), one week before our planned move date, the Letting Agent called to say that the property owner “had fallen on hard times” and was now going to move into the house themselves and no longer wished to rent it out.
It was a bit of a shock, to say the least.
I’d shut down my business, Phil had arranged annual leave, we had a family member coming to stay and help with the move, the moving van was booked and ready for collection, services were being transferred, and the house is pretty much all in boxes, ready to go.
The Letting Agent was calm and cold - it was out of their hands after all. All they could offer us instead was a six-month let in an unsuitable building. We had to prompt them to initiate the refund of our deposits (they removed the property from the rental market) as they seemed to forget that part of the process.
In over twenty years of renting, this is a first. I’ve missed out on properties because I was too slow to get in there with an application, or because they chose someone else’s application over mine. While house-hunting this time around we’ve missed out on many possible homes because we simply cannot get to view a place fast enough – we’re not local.
I’ve never had a landlord change their mind at the eleventh hour before.
It’s all completely legal, if not ethical, and they are entirely within their rights to do this as they own the property. Tenants have no power and little protection against this behaviour. It’s a risk we all take when we rent somewhere to live.
We are extremely lucky that we left a few weeks overlap between moving in there and handing back keys to where we currently live. Our idea being that the move wouldn’t need to be so rushed or stressful. The best laid plans… However, I am incredibly grateful that I am not going to be homeless in a week and a half.
I can only imagine what life must be like when you hit “hard times” and have a spare house to fall into.
I wish them well and thank them for making this decision now, rather than serving us with a Section 21 Notice a few months after we’d settled in.
In the meantime… we are still moving!
Our window of time to relocate has been made smaller, but we will find somewhere better. Hopefully with a more reliable landlord and definitely through a different Letting Agency.
On the Business side of things, Hannah Kate Makes will essentially be closed from Sunday 23rd February as I will need to pack up all stock and it will be inaccessible.
My aim is to re-open at the end of March.
I’ll pop up on social media from time to time, when I can, but my presence will be reduced until we’ve settled in somewhere new.
Weekly blog posts will continue to be added up until the move.
As always, the best way to keep updated with all things Hannah Kate Makes is to sign up to The Spooky List and receive emails straight into your inbox. You’ll find the form below.
The house hunt continues!
Thank you for reading to the end of this update – I did promise more reality on these pages, although this may not be what you were expecting! I’m off to continue packing and de-cluttering but leave you with a reminder that not all “hard times” are created equal, dragons live among us.
Take care and stay spooky.
HK x
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