Tue, 11 Oct 2005
Okay, after various twists and turns, recently, I've succeeded in finding an appartment!
A short summary of the situation: I wanted to find an appartment that'd allow me to spend less time on the road to my work @ XS4ALL, and so I looked for a place in the neighborhood.
There's a few demands I place on an appartment, and that is that it should be quite large (80m2+) and be on the groundfloor (i want cats, they need to be able to go out ;). So, after a while I stumbled upon something that looked suitable and even affordable, too! 120m2, groundfloor, 3 meter high ceilings; perfect.
Well, not quite perfect, since it had no furniture... or rather, it has nothing, no kitchen, no real floor, no.... well, you get the idea. However, it had one thing : a spiral staircase leading to the appartment above it... (?).
The deal: this appartment belongs to two appartment being sold at the same time; somebody lived there with his family and used both appartments. All fine and well, since they also were allowing me to bid on just one of them so I contacted a real-estate agent to take care of the bidding and advise me, etc. . After a bit of work (low bids, tests for Asbestos contents in parts of floor, etc), I put my bid down and waited.
The story: after a day, we get a reaction: sorry, erm.. we're selling both at the same time to somebody who was juuuust a little faster than you. Arggh; the lab-results for the asbestos-test had taken a bit too long and so I was too late with my bid and paid for a useless asbestos-test.
Bah..
having paid my real-estate agent, I settled down to wait for a bit until I got the 'appetite back' to try again. However, a week later we get a call from the selling estate-agent that the deal had been blown off at the last moment.
So, I was free to bid again!. yay!
The history: this appartment had been bid on 2 times prior to my bid, and nearly sold, too. The first time the deal was blown off at the last moment too. The second time the building-commission they (understandably) weren't so happy with the idea of allowing the 'Problem Youth Council' to use these two apartments for their activities. The third time had been my mysterious competitor in my bidding.
Now, I bid on the appartment again and was able to get it a littttle bit cheaper than what I bid for it the first time. Happily, I finally won the bid and recently signed the temporary 'contract of purchase', etc.
However, the selling estate agent comes with this jewel: another party, who visited the appartments about 6 months ago, recently (days before I signed) contacted him again and wanted to place a bid again on both appartments...
So, after 2 years of having been bid/sold twice.. now suddenly everyone bids on it like crazy..
Weird-ass stuff; they even bid me 500 Euro's to forfeit my bid and let them take it. What's more, they already LIVE in the complex and have two appartments joined side-by-side that they now wanted to swap for two that are situated ontop of eachother.
What-ever... Now, however, it's gonna all come down to getting all the things sorted out that need to be sorted out to get this appartment into livable condition. I'm lucky that the toilet and bathroom work, but it'll need:
- A floor (120m2 of it!)
- A kitchen
- New mains-distribution cabinet (esp. EARTH!)
- Walls in different places to make rooms out of the two 60m2 sections that now make up the appartment
- Existing walls will need to be repaired/stucco'ed/painted/etc
- It'll need ceilings with cable- and air-ducts going over it
- It'll need some serious lighting/network infra-structure
All in all, more than a few months worth of pure, un-adulterated, honest-to-god, get-down-to-the-nitty-gritty, heavy hardcore DIY..
I can't say that I'm not worried about it, but I'm somehow looking forward to 'making my own home'. Keep checking here for developments on this front. I'll get some pictures/data online some time soon!