My decision to sell my house, pay off all my debt, and live in a garden cottage with my son for a year or two was painful. Or so I thought. Turns out I knew nothing about pain.
What followed was not only excruciating, it was prolonged, sometimes beyond what I thought was my point of endurance. And it was a harsh reminder of the brick walls of bureaucracies that can break anything from balls to the best of intentions.
Let me start at the beginning. Fasten your seatbelt, because this is more of a minefield than a straight road, and most definitely not a scenic route.
Here goes. Step number one was to get an estate agent, which I did. Everything went sort of swimmingly until said agent got a buyer who offered a positively mood-elevating good price…subject to approved building plans.
So off I went to the maze of our metropolis, aka Joburg City Council’s offices in Braamfontein, appropriately right opposite the civic theatre, as what ensued fell somewhere between high drama and black comedy with just a touch of Greek tragedy.
Long story short, the council had lost my building plans. The previous owner denied any knowledge thereof, swearing that the plans for the outbuildings had been approved. Except they weren’t. Five of my boundary lines were running through my neighbour’s property, a situation which, to this day, remains unresolved.
The bottom-line was that I had to drop my price by more than R300 000 to get a buyer who would accept the property without approved building plans. Because – and this is one humongous BECAUSE – once the building plan Pandora’s Box had been opened, it could never be closed again.
But this was by far not my only head and heartache. I was astounded by the capital outlay that was expected from me as seller in desperate need of a sale.
For one thing, there were the show days. Every time the property had to be ship-shape, you and your entourage had to be out of the way and so on, which nine times out of 10 cost money. Oh and then, there was the time that two guys came back after five, claiming the agent had given them permission to come in to look at the property again – only to disappear with my laptop and my son’s blackberry. Trauma added to trauma.
And so it went on. Unfortunately, there are of a lot of ducks to get in a row before your sale can go swimmingly. In addition, there are no easy solutions to the kind of problems that I encountered.
Instead of walking free with a clean slate, after more than a year, thanks to all of the above, I ended up with a R160 000 shortfall on my bond, and the realisation that the only thing I could have done differently, was to lock up the laptop and the cellphone before the fraudsters returned.
In hindsight – that wonderful thing that is an exact science – I would have used the following three words as my guiding light: Planning, planning, and planning!
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