Thanks folks. We put the house on the market in late 2006 after having been given three valuations, all the same, of £225,000. It was a 15 year old four bedroomed detached house with double garage in a lovely village on the Lancashire coast. We honestly thought we'd have no trouble getting shut of it and then........the housing market fell over! We had people who wanted to buy it but they had houses to sell themselves and we didn't have that many viewings either.
We were given an offer we couldn't refuse on a cheap cottage to rent by our b & b landlady up in Orkney (she knew how much we wanted to live there) so on April 3rd 2008 we moved all our worldly goods up.........best thing we ever did.
We dropped the price of the house bit by bit until someone without a chain made us an offer of £180,000 and we accepted - enough waiting, let's get on with life! Previous offers had included one as low as £149,000.......you can guess what our answer was!
Up here there is no way you could get that kind of a house for £180,000 but then all we want is somewhere peaceful, a project but a cheap one - it will have to be! Can't see many coming onto the market over the autumn/winter so we'll bide our time as we intend this one to be our last
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Life's a bitch and then you diet.
- WE HAVE SOLD OUR HOUSE!!!!!!
It's such a huge weight lifted off our shoulders 
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I don't mind that so much - as long as we can cover our mortgage when it finally does sell.
