Rejected

Wow, so this is how it feels.

(Not the rejected bit, that has happened often enough in the past in various parts of my life on a variety of different emotional and professional levels and while that sounds extremely self pitying, I am totally understanding of the entire procedure, however much I whimper after each occasion, ensuring myself, each time, that everything can be put down to experience and there’s nothing that can’t be solved by a nice cup of tea).

My boyfriend called, I knew what he was going to say.

Mr Fat, it seems, has returned from being 'at sea', has rejected our offer, and buggered off back to being 'at sea' for yet another week without so much as a window of possible negotiation.

I've never haggled for anything in my life, certainly not to reduce an item in price unless it has been so hideously damaged that it doesn't resemble in any way what it was originally intended to be.

I think the most I've ever haggled for is to beg for my tax to be thrown in for free when I purchased my car. They had £12,500. I got £100 worth of tax. A clear bargain (for whom, I won’t go into, needless to say the bloke who sold me the car now has a promotion and I have a rather large debt). And that was only because I literally couldn't afford it and would have probably cried hysterically had they not.

I am a salesman's dream. I don't barter. Ever.

I actually sell the item for them.

Partly because I can't bear their sales schpiel, partly because I am so inherently terrified of salesmen in general trying to sell me something that I don't want so I try to establish what I do want before they sink their money-hungry teeth into my unsuspecting wallet (occasionally falling foul of their trickery, occasionally duping myself into purchasing something I actively dislike), partly because I cannot bear to be made a fool of by pitching laughably too low, or in the same vein, too high.

So I just usually, quietly, hurriedly, purchase the item at full price and tootle out of whatever establishment I am in before the cackle of the sales assistant has time to echo in my deluded brain that I have not been overcharged and whatever I have purchased really is worth the retail price I just sold a kidney for.

Not so in the case of purchasing the House From Hell. The WebStress was going to stand her ground, fight back, hold strong. All by way of instructing my boyfriend, unconstructively, unhelpfully and most of the time rather repetitively, on how to speak to the estate agent regarding our offer.

We had, in my cowardly defence, no option with our offer. There was no way we would get a mortgage for the amount it was valued at (by someone who was clearly blind with no sense of smell, or actually any sense at all). And there was no way any mortgage provider would give us 100% of the money that they were asking for.

My boyfriend and I have had a few ‘heated discussions’ regarding our offer on the House From Hell. He has his heart set on the property, I have my head set on vast mortgage repayments that we cannot afford (that’s if we ever got granted it in the first place) and a vague quality of life that I want to retain.

And the house is in such a dire state that I feel it is totally unjust to reward them with any cash above the bare minimum for a property that clearly hasn’t been cleaned in 12 months and its residents have actively covered themselves in dirt and grime and rolled around its insides in gay abandon, smearing their flaking filthy skin cells across any exposed surface, and for a garden that appears to be an oversized rubbish bin for someone who has a very poor aim and no idea of special awareness.

The house has been on the market for six months. The inhabitants clearly believe they are living in some sort of dirt hovel so relocating them won’t be too much of a difficult task. The owners are suffering some sort of messy divorce and clearly want rid of each other. There is writing all over the walls in the children’s bedroom. There is mould on the ceiling in the bathroom and the kitchen. There are probably rats that have been relocated by the council due to unfit living conditions.

And they’ve turned our offer down.

Now I don’t really know what to do about this. They don’t, apparently, want an awful lot more money. I don’t want to give them any more money. An extra two thousand pounds in the grand scheme of things probably isn’t that much and let’s face it, the market isn’t bending over backwards with the weight of suitable properties in a reasonable price range to accommodate my boyfriend’s grand building plans (which apparently involve using every page in his DIY book which I believe weighs more than a car, after he left it stranded on my lap the other day in bed) and a soon to be fully grown Newfy.

But I feel so…so wrong for paying any more money than we possibly have to for what I would struggle to even let a homeless person live in even on a temporary basis in its current state, for fear of contracting some sort of disease. I have lived in student housing in the filthiest, rat infested, grime ridden areas of Bradford which I recalled fondly when faced with this house. These people have not cared for this house, and as a result it isn’t worth what they want for it.

I do know though that my boyfriend is fiercely passionate about the possibilities for this particular property and that my arguments tend to collapse underneath my lack of ability to hold a constructive discussion, while he eloquently and efficiently usually manages to manipulate me into his way of thinking, effortlessly and, often, without me even noticing.

We are to have ‘discussions’ this evening about the House From Hell. And, whatever our decision, face yet another agonising week waiting to hear Mr Fat’s response.

Well, I guess, everyone said buying a house wasn’t easy. I just wasn’t expecting this process to be so painfully long and drawn out.

I wonder if its too early for gin.