It was now April 2006. We decided that regardless of anything else we could do nothing without selling our current home, so the first thing to do would be to get it valued and on the market, we would be under no obligation to complete the sale if the figures did not add up. We telephoned a few local estate agents and were surprised to find that most would take up to a week to come along to value and photograph pur house. Then we found one that would come the next day, naturally this was the most expensive estate at an extortionate 2% of the sale price, where most were charging around 1.5%. Anyway we needed to move quickly if we were going to get anywhere so we arranged for them to come along. They did and also valued our property at a little more than we were expecting (which would help with the numbers). We agreed to go with them provided the property was put up for sale immediately, with no delays. We were promised that upon signing the contract they would start actively marketing the property to over 100 prospects on their books that were looking for a property just like ours. We waited for the promised flow of eager buyers, but heard nothing, it wasnt in their office window, kit wasnt in the local newspaper property pages, what was happening, and all the while we were possibly losing the church. We had made it clear to the estate agents that if we missed out on the church then the sale was off as we were staying put. We were so disappointed by the estate agent that we immediately wrote a letter to them cancelling the contract with the minimum 28 days notice and delivered it by hand.
Then a week or so later we had a couple of viewings set up, people arrived and even though they had seen the pictures and knew all about the house it was amazing the number of people that arrived with quite clearly no intention of buying this type of house. There was nothing wrong with it but we had only just reached the end of finishing the new extension and our next job would have been to tile the kitchen and replace the windows in the original part of the house. Something was putting people off and it could only have been this final detailing. Then a family arrived who we knew, from their reaction, wanted our home. sure enough a day later they made an offer, which we accepted. Happy days we thought, We decided that the only way to get some sort of hold on the church was to make an offer to the estate agents handing the sale of the church. It was a bit of a tightrope gamble but without this move we were almost certain to miss out on it. The phone call was made, a firm offer was put on the table, but of course we had to say that although our house sale was not finalised we had a firm offer and it was all systems go. The estate contacted their client, the local dioscese and we waited for the reply. A couple of days later we got the call, yes they had accepted our offer, the church was ours. We looked at each other and said together "What have we done?", it was a mixture of relief, excitement and fear all in one blast. Well we had done it, better open a good bottle of wine to celebrate and calm the nerves. We had made one very big step on the road to living in our church, but what a bumpy road it was about to become.
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