I’ve had a letter from my solicitor!  It enclosed the reply from the seller’s solicitors, several maps and the entries from the Crofting Registers for the two crofts.  I’m not exactly certain why or how, but it seems that because the crofts are still held in Ethel’s name, it makes the paperwork an awful lot simpler and cuts out a lot of the waiting around for the Crofting Commission to approve things.  I think, although I may be wrong, that it essentially now treats me as if Ethel had nominated me to take over the tenancies.

Anyway, my solicitor has asked me to confirm that I’m happy with a few changes they’ve made to the clauses (things like the sellers not being able to warrant that the electricity works properly or there are no contaminants, because they’re the executors and haven’t lived there – usually in Scotland you have 2 weeks after the date of completion to report serious defects to the seller, this will essentially be cancelled) and as long as I am, then all I have to do is deposit the purchase price in my solicitor’s bank account and the other side will start the paperwork – my solicitor will hold the money in escrow until they’ve confirmed the transfer of the tenancies has been completed correctly.

So it’s SHOW ME THE MONEY!! time.  I am paying £95,000 for the two tenancies, so I’ve rung up the financial institution that runs the part of the family trust I’m borrowing the money from to see how much is in there.  This makes me sound like a total rich kid – I’m not, my father died when I was relatively young and his investments were put into a trust fund to provide an income for my mother for the rest of her life and capital growth for me and my half-brother to inherit after she dies.  For one reason or another, it’s split between two financial institutions and the bit I’m borrowing hasn’t been paying Mum an income for a number of years now, so my brother and I, as the trustees, decided that the trust would be better off loaning me the money to do this and I’ll pay Mum an income off it at a rate of base rate + 3%.

They told me that there was £91,500 in there and all we needed to do was write to them to confirm that we wanted to liquidate it (1% fee for liquidating it) and close the account.  They’ll also take a pro rata amount out for the quarterly management charge, so I’m expecting to get around £90,000 transferred into my bank account early next week, though this is a bank not renowned for its customer service skills, so I’m half-expecting it to go wrong somewhere!  The remaining £5,000 will either come out of my savings or Mum will add to it from her Premium Bonds so she gets the monthly amount she’s expecting in income.