It's Official!

Today we officially "completed" on the purchase of our house in London. It was a long road to get here and it was strangely anti-climatic at the end. We received a phone call from our solicitor's office this morning, who told us to contact the seller's estate agent to pick up the keys. We went to the estate agent's office and met Guy (the agent) in person for the first time. He gave us an envelope with my name on it. Inside was a key to the house. No mountain of paperwork to sign, no proof of ID...nothing. We must have signed the necessary paperwork at some point during the process, but I honestly don't remember signing many documents. How did they know it was us? Must have been the American accent...

Next stop: the house. The last time we were at the house was earlier this month to take measurements with Charlotte, our architect. At that time, no effort had been made to start packing. So it was no surprise to see "removal" men emptying the house today and throwing the contents haphazardly into the back of a truck that looked suspiciously like the trucks that picked up junk from our back alley on Locust Street.

The front door was wide open, so we walked in. We met the brother of the woman living in the house, asked him a few questions and then let them get on with the removal. A bit cheeky of the sellers to remove things after the sale was completed, but not a big deal to us.

It was a good thing we stopped by (and a good thing I asked if he knew anything about the previous owners) because he pulled out an old envelope stuffed with paperwork. When we got home we discovered the envelope contained the deeds and mortgage documents for all of the previous owners going back to 1875. Amazing! The first three owners were a brick merchant, a tailor and a pianoforte string maker. In 1875 the annual rent on the property was 6 pounds, 13 shillings and 4 pence for a 99 year lease. All of the older documents were written by hand on parchment paper and sealed with wax. We also learned the street was originally called Carrol Road.

Onward with the renovations!