Slow progress

Waiting on news of how our house sale is progressing is excruciating. Days tick by, a week, little news.

It feels like our lives are on hold.

In theory cashing in our large (but illiquid) asset would set us up nicely. In reality our finances have been crushed by our trip to and escape from Asia, no one has offered to buy our asset and in a few months we have no more tenants. What do we do if it does not sell?

Personally, I'm still happy to travel, in the event of the sale not going through I would be inclined towards renting it out for another year and heading off in the bus around Europe. Ali though has had enough. With her year long baby induced sleep deprivation it's no great surprise that settling down is appealing. 

If the the sale does go through, we've found some places we would definitely consider on our recent trip around Cornwall, Devon and Somerset. While none absolutely jumped out at us, South Devon (thanks Mimi) and good parts of Somerset were great. Without more progress on our sale it did feel completely unreal - house hunting while skint is a strange experience.

One thing has crystallised though. Assuming the sale goes through as planned we want to either self build our new home or buy a doer-upper.

For me building a house/home is one of my earliest ambitions and as a couple we've always enjoyed altering and improving the places we've owned. What could be more exciting than designing and building our own eco-home from the ground up?

While it does seem a little nuts to be considering this after our crazy two years of travel, at least we won't get bored once we stop moving.