We decided to take the offer rather than try for a better one elsewhere. Certain legal shenanikins had come to a conclusion which meant we were able to afford to take a drop in the price and we were mindful that the property market appeared to be about to take a bit of a dive and the last thing we wanted was to be trapped in a house we had already emotionally moved on from.

The sale was fairly pain free.

We visited Greece for a fortnight and were lucky enough to find a lovely villa for long term rent and so we were able to organise the international removers to come and collect the items we were taking with us and give them an address for delivery in Greece.

We are now living happily in Greece, awaiting the delivery of our new Catamaran for us to use to enjoy the many sparkling beaches that are all around us.

The food here is amazing, we eat fruit and vegetables only minutes after they have been picked or harvested and the inexpensive 'everyday' fish and meat is so superior to the expensive stuff that we used to pay through the nose for in the UK that every meal time is a real pleasure.

I have rediscovered my love of cooking, and yet we are all losing weight

Virtually no crime, a friendly respectful population and a much lower cost of living.

I think that this is as close to happy ending as is realistic possible.

Conclusions:

We sold through a local estate agent who knew the buying public and knew someone who was interested in our property.

Selling via the internet alone is probably best done if you have a 'lower end' of the market property suitable for first time buyers or investment purchasers.

We didn't get any enquiries from any of the internet options such as gumtree, vivastreet or monkeymove.

If people are selling due to financial difficulties (which we weren't) then selling to one of those companies that buy the house and rent it back to you is an interesting option that should not be rejected out of hand.

Spending money on an advert in local newspapers or local papers' property websites is a waste of time when you are selling a property.

If you are clear as to wanting to sell and move, be ready to take an offer - in the long run it is much better to be free of a property than dragged down by worries and expenses and mortgage payments on a building you no longer want and which may be holding you back from a better life elsewhere.

We have dropped the price of our house in Swansea from £269,995 to £249,500 for a quick sale!!!

Here are the rooms
1. the sitting room with a concealed cinema screen, plaster coving and picture rail and double glazed double bay windows.

2. Dining room in 4 bedroom house for sale in Swansea

3. Study  11'4 x 9'0 (3.45m x 2.74m )  (no picture)

4. Modern fitted kitchen with dishwasher, american style fridge freezer, 2.5 bowl stainless steel sink units, multi media unit with MP3, DVD player, Digital and FM radio, and digital tv.

5. Conservatory / breakfast room

I will post the garden and upstairs tomorrow.

We have been offered £240,000 as a cash purchase but they are only the second people who have viewed.  We are going to see if there are any better offers over the next ten days or so.

The website is http://www.stjohnshouse.info

Yay!!!

'For Sale' board went up at last.

It is very eye catching. A double sided board and positioned to be seen whichever end of the road a car or pedestrian might be travelling.

There is a very cute little monkey on it which has already caused a bit of comment and apparantly a few brochures have already been requested from the agents - so hopefully things are starting to happen.

We are just waiting for Carl our chippy to pop along and put the finishing touches on our brand new utility room and cloakroom.

It's looking extremely good. I have gone for a slightly Japanese feel to those rooms as they lead out onto the garden and I have a bamboo and zen 'thing' going on out there.

The conservatory, kitchen and the utility and cloakroom are all seemlessly blending into an 'outdoor indoor' type mish mash.

The loo has turned out to be a very pleasant place to be. Very clean and calm and relaxing.

I am convinced that anyone who actually steps over the threshold of the house is going to fall in love immediately with it now. There is such a serene atmosphere and the lovely thick walls are keeping the house nice and cool despite the fairly humid day we are having today.

I remember when I lived in Barratt detached house - in the hot weather it was murder, as the walls were just not thick enough to provide much insulation from the heat so if a front room got warm then the rooms next to it would as well and the windows didn't generate any air flow even when they were open.

No problems like that in this house. The sash windows we installed are amazing! If you open the top and the bottom of just one window in one room, the hot air leaves through the top gap and pulls in cool air through the bottom - which causes a nice little air flow all on its own.

It is nice to sit near the window and just enjoy the breeze.

Some lucky person is going to have a wonderful house to enjoy and we can be proud to pass it on to them and enjoy our new life in Greece knowing we did a good job here.

I am a great believer in Karma.

Signed up with Monkey Move for now. Still waiting for the sign to turn up though - we were expecting it yesterday.

We have nearly finished decorating the loo, and the utility room is next. The paper we chose has turned out to be even nicer than I thought it would be.

If we weren't going to live in Greece and have adventures and go sailing etc, I would be feeling very sad  to be selling this house. It is soo gorgeous now. If only we could have afforded to do it up when we first moved in so we could have had more time living in it while it is so nice.

Well I predicted that we wouldn't get much decorating done over the weekend and I was right.

  Spooky or what?

We have started today though and I confidently predict we will be done by Wednesday afternoon.

We decided to put our house on the market with MonkeyMove and see how it goes for about four weeks and then re-evaluate the situation.

We are supposed to get our 'For Sale' board in Three days time and in the meantime I have changed the phone numbers on the vivastreet and gumtree adverts to direct to the agents instead of us.

Assuming my psychic powers hold up we will be able to photograph the newly decorated utility room and downstairs loo for the house website.

Get back to you soon,

This weekend we are hoping to get all the final 'snags' sorted out on the house.

All those little jobs that need finishing in order to bring the house up a notch from fantastic to perfect.

I have a few light switches to change from nasty white plastic ones to matching gold and brass effect ones.

Then we will be rubbing down the banisters and repainting them.

We made the mistake of having carpet laid too soon after painting them and they were chipped and rubbed in places. I wasn't happy with the finish the decorator left on the handrail anyway - I want it glassy and smooth and it is anything but and it is currently a dirt magnet.

I have bought some gorgeous deep brown paint in extra high gloss and will be finishing the handrail and tops of the main pillars (or whatever they are called) on the banisters so that they are shiny an chocolatey. That is more in keeping with the Edwardian period anyway than white. They were a nasty pine before, which is nice if you are going for the country farmhouse look, but this house is much more 'elegant townhouse' and deserves to be decorated accordingly.

We will also be finishing off the decorating in the utility room and downstairs loo, and painting the smallest bedroom.

OK I doubt we'll get it all finished this weekend but we should get a fair amount fo it done at least.

I will get some before and after pictures done as well for the blog.

In our epic attempt to sell our property in Clydach, Swansea, Glamorgan we welcomed Glenn from MonkeyMove into our home today to hear what he had to say about his company and their services.

I am quite impressed so far. After yesterday with the typical 'suits' from estate agents (one of whom was quite nice all the same) with their extremely expensive 'services' this was refreshing.

Glenn was friendly but not at all pushy, and talked us through what they do and what they don't do.

It is quite a new concept in estate agency - ie not a rip-off and he (and the lady I spoke to on the phone) comes across as a really genuine person rather than an 'estate agent'.

I think we may well give this a try and see how it works out. But we have a weekend to discuss and fight over it. I think my usual sheet of paper with pros and cons for standard estate agent versus Monkey Move versus private selling and then make our choices on the result.

Today we had two estate agents come round to view the property.

One of them insists on 1.5% commission and an exclusive 12 weeks sole agency contract and tried to persuade us to sell the property at quite a low price.

The other one is prepared to go for an 8 week sole agency contract and give us a discount on their 1.25% commission. They also have a very solid internet presence and have an excellent knowledge of the local market. I also think it is telling that they are the agents that all the other agents have bad mouthed, and that they appear to have all the 'up market' properties on their books in comparison with the other agents.

Tomorrow we have the MonkeyMove lady coming round so we will see how she measures up to the competition.

The last time we sold a house we lived in the South of England and it was easy choosing an agent because we had had dealings with most of them as tenants before we eventually bought a home and had a good idea who we could trust to be working in our best interests. Here is trickier.

I know we will get through this and everything will work out but it is hard work and I get very befuddled by it all. The wrong decision could cost us thousands and we just can't afford to lose that kind of money.

Still I know in the scheme of things we are very lucky overall and so I must try to keep some sort of perspective. But I am one of life's worriers - which makes me anxious - hah!!

Getting thoroughly teed off with the whole selling our house thing by now.

If only I didn't get bored and irritated so easily.

I know that my adverts have only been online for 1 whole day but in my deepest hidden subconscious I was expecting gazillions of people to have contacted us by now offering to buy our beautiful house.

No wonder I get disappointed so much.  Other people's definitions of unrealistic expectations are my plans aims and objectives.

Any way, I have been further researching alternatives to the 'standard' estate agent.

In my area there is a 'new' type of estate agent in operation called Monkey Move  and I have had a little look at what they offer and have invited them round for a chat on Friday morning.

The first and obviously eye grabbing thing about them is that they only charge .5% - that is 1/2% for their services.

Which if you get a sale from them is a considerable saving.

They field phone calls, advertise your property on all the 'biggy' property websites such as RightMove etc and organise viewings at mutually convenient times for viewers and sellers.  They also provide a For Sale sign with a rather cute looking Monkey logo on it.

What they don't do is advertise individual properties in local papers, or conduct viewings themselves.

But they have a sole agency agreement lasting 12 weeks and that's a long time to get tied in if it isn't generating viewings.

So if anyone is reading this I would appreciate some feedback as to whether or not you would be more likely to look for a house to purchase online or in the newspaper.

Let me know via the comments section.

The woman from IC network she say  NO 

Those old stress levels are rising...  not so slowly and very surely.