Moving In

It was a catch 22 situation, I could find another house but the surveys and faffing would all begin again and take as long as waiting for the Deeds on Ambleside. I needed to get my family back together. The initial momentum of making the break had gone and it now felt like I had blown my whole family apart. The only thing to do was to rent somewhere whilst I waited. I had begun to look at property to rent but it was a very depressing thing to contemplate moving twice and of course you couldn't sign a rental lease for anything less than six months, I felt utterly trapped.
Then in the early hours of my sleepless night I came up with a cunning plan, why didn't I rent Ambleside? It was empty and it would mean only one move, sure it smelt of wee but at least I could begin the work on making it livable so first thing in the morning I very shakily sat down and made the call to the estate agents. She said she would contact the seller and get back to me. Unusually the call came came straight back, the sellers were all for it. I found out later that they were really worried they'd loose me as a buyer and they just wanted to get me in there, although I heard later still that they were also worried that if I lived there for a bit it might put me off buying. Everyone was very nervous and very strained it seemed. Once all the hoo-ha had settled down I met the sellers a few times and they were lovely people and had great affection for the old couple that had lived in the house.
So a rental agreement was drawn up, I had to sign for three months but the agreement would terminate before that of course as soon as the Deeds were sorted out and I would get my bond back. I handed over quite a large amount of money up front to rent a house with no kitchen, bare floorboards and a hideous bathroom, you couldn't have got further away from the standard of living my children were used to and I'm sure my friends thought I was nuts. They didn't say it but you could see it written all over their faces when they first came round. Even the rental agent from the estate agents looked shocked when she let us in that first morning as that was the first time she'd seen it. Obviously I'd told them I wasn't prepared to pay the going rental rate for a terraced house considering the condition that it was in and we had negotiated an amount. It really irked me that I was having to pay the sellers unnecessary money as I was perfectly able to buy but at least we were in, three months after my offer had initially been accepted but we weren't out of the woods yet.