So what was the plan going to be now the market had fallen flat and we were paying to live in weekday accommodation. Too late that we already had new jobs, in a new area too far to commute to our old house.

Of course Mr OCG had said we’d done it the wrong way round, he thought we should’ve sold and moved house and commuted back to our old job until we found new jobs. But as always it’s a chicken and egg situation, what if you’d relocated everything only to find the perfect job didn’t exist in the area you’d moved too. Hmmm no doubt it’s a real dilemma, but no doubt once everything is sorted it will have been worth it! Famous last words!

So back too the drawing board, what about taking extra mortgage against our existing property loan, we have plenty of equity in the Oxford house and we only want a ‘cheap’ house in the Midlands, that might work. But no! Contacting our mortgage provider they were winding down the product gradually and whilst they were happy for us to port our mortgage to a new property they were not offering any new borrowing. Transferring to a new lender entirely wouldn’t work as you need to show you can cope with your normal mortgage for 6 to 12 months before extra borrowing can be arranged.

A google search on options revealed a ‘new type of mortgage customer’ Let to Buy. It seems a whole host of people out there are in the same boat as us, a need to sell in order to move to a new job, but unable to, quick enough. So clearly a new market has emerged, let your house out while you buy a new one. Of course there are conditions attached, the main one being the amount you can ‘release’ from your property to buy your next one is based on the amount you can rent the property out for.

Fortunately for us, Oxford area commands high rental values so our house would potentially rent for high enough to release enough money when combined with our ported mortgage to buy a house (in need of extension and modernisation) in our new area. Perfect, we now have a budget to buy somewhere in the Midlands the additional monthly cost for which is going to less than the cost of our weekday rental. It also means we can start putting down roots in our new area and although the new house wouldn’t be great, after all we still need to wait for Oxford to sell before we can do the big extension and renovations we have planned, at least we are getting started.

Have you ever had one of those ‘great ideas’ and are now beginning to re-think it was ever great!

A couple of years ago after much discussion with Mr OCG we decided we just couldn’t bear to have to work until we are 67 so it would be a great idea if we could semi-retire or at least go part time by the time we are 55. We also realised that our 2 adult sons, having moved to the Midlands to go to university were in fact settling down there. Perfect we thought, we can move to the Midlands, where we grew up anyway and where our extended family still live. So we will be able to live closer to all our family but particularly our sons. To make this happen we hatched a grand plan.

Within the next few years we will,

Cash in on our, relatively expensive Oxford house, pay off the mortgage and buy a relatively inexpensive house in the Midlands.

Find new jobs in the Midlands.

Move house with the intention of going part time /semi retirement by 55

What could go wrong?

Haha just 12 months later who would’ve known…….

So thinking that anyone on the wrong side of 50 would struggle to get a new job, last September I began applying thinking I was in for the long haul. Little did I know the first job I applied for, I got! Head of Physics in one of my first choice schools. Oops that threw a spanner in the works, fortunately the job didn’t start until this September so that gave us almost a year for Mr OCG to get a job and for us to sell the house and move.

Mr OCG patiently waited for a DT job to come up in a Midlands school and of course, typically not one came up, hmm what were we going to do…. wait and be patient, thats all we could do.

Then of course all of a sudden just before Easter this year, a great job came up, he applied and got it, hurrah things were dropping into place.

To be continued……..

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