We are doing a housing association house swap. My house is very desirable. It’s a 15 year old house in a small cul-de-sac in a ‘naice’ village. It has its own closed off driveway, a front and back garden (huge), and we’ve got a huge shed as well. It’s a bit tatty but nothing insane. Also has 2 storage cupboards and an upstairs and downstairs bathroom, as well as a dining room. This is all relevant because when it comes to council house swapping, the other party (who we are swapping with) really has won the jackpot. The only issues are regular kitchen wear and tear (council haven’t done a new kitchen since the house was built, and have refused to help when the cheap materials were literally falling apart) and the odd chip in walls etc from where paintings have been hung up.
We are only moving because DC are now teenagers and their social life and mental health is being ruined here, as it’s miles from anywhere and there is no bus. We’re swapping our house with a town centre end-terrace. We’re sacrificing a lot (front garden, our shed that we funded, our downstairs bathroom and our own driveway) for the location.
Council did an inspection a couple of weeks ago. They said that the kitchen is unfit and they couldn’t approve the swap. I pointed out we’d been begging for new cupboards
for years and the man just shrugged his shoulders. We are desperate for the swap to not fall through and so we offered to do any work ourselves (this will be all of our savings down the shitter) but he said we’re not allowed to. He has said they will probably do the kitchens in our cul-de-sac some point later on in the year or early next year so we just have to wait. We are absolutely gutted. A friend has told us this is wrong and if we sort the kitchen ourselves to a decent standard then they will still approve it. I don’t know what to do.
And in a semi-separate issue, the woman we are swapping with has demanded we do up the entire house on our own dime. She has said she won’t pull out of the swap over the kitchen dilemma and she’s happy to wait but she seems to expect lots in return for that. She wants a new lawn, all walls stripping and painting white, and the pond filling in. Her house (the one we’re moving to) is at the moment an absolute shit-tip. The bathroom is a blue linoleum floor (like you’d see in a hospital bathroom), the doors are hanging off the hinges, wallpaper coming off the walls etc. Don’t make me start on the garden. We just need the location. We’d never make such demands of her.
AIBU to just feel so drained and angry? I want to pull out but the kids are suffering here. It’s been an absolute fucking shitshow. I’ve already dealt with abuse from this woman earlier on in the process because she heard that HS2 potentially could be built nearby and she called me a liar and said I’d deceived her by not mentioning it. I knew nothing about it. She’s acting like she’s buying our house, and she isn’t. It’s a swap, but there’s nothing fair about it.