Monday 12 March 2012

Progress, sort of.

Hello! Here I am again with a little bit of news. Not much; it's been a slow week, but it seems polite to keep you updated.

So, we're waiting to hear back from the survey. It took place last weekend so we shouldn't be waiting too long. It's scary, exciting, and then scary again. Surveys are really interesting, but also potentially full of revelations about inappropriate roofing materials, rising damp, subsidence and all sorts of other delights. Rather than these terrifying things being in massive red type like they should be, they're casually strewn through the weighty tome in exactly the same size and colour as the hugely mundane observations about how many windows there are. This makes the whole experience of reading one feel akin to walking through some sort of literary minefield: scary, but also rather exciting when you get to the end of a chapter without anything massive blowing your plans completely out of the water. Fingers crossed it will be a profoundly dull document with no surprises. We'll let you know.

In other, rather more definitely exciting news, two new people have started the joining process for the co-op. For now, they're going to remain mysterious, but if all goes well, we buy the house, and they become members of our merry gang, I will persuade them to write a blogpost introducing themselves. If they like us and we like them, our co-op will have seven adults and one child, but will still fit in Labyrinth. I told you it was big.

A quick round-up of other news:
- We've nearly finished our secondary rules, honest. I know we've been doing this for ages, but we really are nearly there - until we think of more, anyway ;) When they're done, we'll put them up as a page on the blog and write a post about them.
- We're still on the lookout for loanstock, just in case anyone wants to make an awesome ethical investment.
- We got a filing cabinet from wonderful local charity MOre Green. I am ridiculously excited about this because weirdly, for someone so messy, I <3 filing.

Expect a post this week with news from the survey, or perhaps just a picture of me in a sobbing heap, depending on how it goes.

- Hannah

Thursday 1 March 2012

House Buying Update and Loanstock Request

Yesterday's post was all whimsy, and I couldn't bear to put all the boring practical stuff in it too (plus it was already hugely long), so here is a quick update of where we are up to with actually buying the place.

Lots of emails have been flying back and forth between us, the mortgage company, the estate agent, our solicitor and our surveyor. It's almost impossible to tell how quickly these emails might actually result in Important Things Happening, but so far there have been no major glitches. It would seem that our business plan works rather well, thank you, and the next big scary thing is really getting the survey done. Work on arranging that is happening today, and if last time is anything to go by, our surveyor will be pretty speedy at getting it done and reporting back to us. We'll let you know the gory details of that once it's done.

So far, we have been very lucky with loanstock, and it forms a large part of our deposit for the house. In reality we can probably make up the shortfall through a loan from Rootstock, but we would rather save the option of a loan from them for future eco-renovations to the property. Because of this, we are looking for a few more people to lend us loanstock. There is lots of information about loanstock on our loanstock page, and we are always super-happy to talk to people about it (and other co-op related things). If you have some spare funds which you are thinking of investing, then please consider lending us loanstock. We have a fine track record of providing cake to investors, and you will always be welcome round for a cup of tea once we have the house. Oh, and you'll get your money back at the end of the investment term, of course, but more importantly, there will also be cake. Our email is golem.coop@gmail.com if you feel like getting in touch.

Right, that's enough practical stuff for now. I'm off to poke people with metaphorical sticks some more.

- Hannah