Deborah Forster

Six months ago, we signed a contract to sell our house. Once it was sold, we would then downsize. Plenty of people do it and it seemed simple. Our children were forty-one, thirty-nine and thirty-five, old enough to withstand the shock. I’d been against the move for years but suddenly we got a little bit excited and debated what our new place would be. My husband wanted an apartment with sweeping views, or at least a town house with a lift; I wanted a cottage with a garden.  But here in Melbourne, soaring interest rates arrived on the doorstep like the plague, and everything changed.  You believe in the possibility of the positive but as Joni Mitchell puts it ‘there is the hope and the hopelessness’, and those six months were full of both.

It wasn’t our idea for settlement to take that long but there was no another buyer, so we were stuck.   My husband thinks any buyer is a good buyer and we all know he’s a pragmatic man, but even he admits we got unlucky. This slow settlement has been like time travelling and not in a good way; you see your past, your present and your future all heading for the door. And you still have to clear out the shed. Maybe, we thought, the door would be closed soon on the buyer’s mistakes. Who knows when you’re in a property developer’s hands. During that time of waiting, it emerged that the buyer was not only into long settlements but was laden with debt and might not be able to complete the sale. He may even have to forfeit.

This caused immense anxiety. We would have to sell again if this happened, and all advice said the housing market had declined since the sale so we wouldn’t get what the developer had paid. True, we would keep his deposit and be able to sue him for the gap between what he’d paid and what we got in the second sale. But what if he was bankrupt?

We knew he had several local houses he couldn’t sell. High interest rates meant no one was buying houses unless they had to. And to top it off, the developer was getting divorced. Our house was to be his family home and that was now out. He insisted on showing people through the sad half-empty house because he thought he could shift it before settlement. That didn’t happen. And he will put the house back on the market the day we sell.

Mortgages are a very expensive accessory now. The house is in a heritage area with extensive covenants so it can only be changed internally and then after consultation with the powers that be. There’s  also a heritage tree that can’t be cut down.

All this caused fear and sadness. The house was not in good hands. You love a house that’s been yours for most of your life. It held our family with all its memories.

We spent  much of the six months getting out of the house and into a new small house that has a garden with plenty of sun. With no garden, a house for me, is not worth buying, unless you can make one. My husband has decided to agree, and thoughts of apartments are gone.

We took the essentials from the old house, but I was out of action in hospital, worried about what had been left and what had been lost. I felt guilty for not helping, couldn’t insist on anything. I could just get better and watch on.

Stuff needed sorting through at the new house and at the old. Big attics filled with overflow from our three adult kids’ lives and our own. This overflow covered the whole upstairs living room floor.

Time takes things you thought you needed and changes it into stuff you don’t know where to put and can’t even fit. Our eldest daughter’s wedding dress was in a battered suitcase which got thrown out.  Will this ever be forgiven?

A sense of urgency was driving us. Many baby clothes went to charity.  Most op shops around here no longer even take books. Most won’t take framed pictures. They don’t take cushions, and I collect them, so I had some beauties. What they need varies, it’s just a lottery on the day you show up. All are different.

I found the rug I crocheted in England when I had a miscarriage at five months with our first child. He would be forty-six now and we called him Joe. I often think of him and the rug brought him back to me sharply and made me cry, something that seldom happens anymore. I will never forget sitting in the freezing room, the windows coated with ice. I was under my husband’s army coat and he was out at work reporting on a blizzard in the south of England in a jumper. I remember moving the wool between my hands, growing the rug to cover us, and believing the baby would live. I could never throw that old rug away. I am in it and so is Joe. It’s safely stored in my cupboard at the new house.

So, we’ve been on a roller-coaster ride with this buyer. No apologies. No explanations. All our information comes from agents and lawyers. On the day before settlement, the developer’s lawyer sent an email to complain that there were too many leaves in the garden. Well,  he’s bought a hundred and ten-year-old, English Elm, so leaves are central: wait till the bats arrive to feast on the elm blossom.

The sale was scheduled to go through on  Friday  at 2pm. By 5pm, it had not happened, so we trailed home from the surf club. Saturday and Sunday felt ominous and amorphous. We were both dreading selling the old house again. Monday, 2pm was the next missed deadline. But at 4.45pm the settlement went through. Before this house, we had bought and sold many times without any hitches. Times have changed. I hope someone buys it to love.

 

Illustration: Red Roofs by Clarice Beckett