Buying the freehold of your pub is worth the hassle

Now, however, my wife, Ann, and I have just bought the Inn @ West End and are jumping for joy, or will be when we get over the last five months!

Three years ago, before our last rent review, we had an abortive negotiation through an agent when we could not agree a price. In June this year I found out who the decision-maker was at Enterprise and after much negotiation we agreed a price in early August with eight weeks to complete before their financial year end.

In July our broker thought he could get funding from a secondary lender. A chance discussion with Barclays led to them offering to fund the purchase with the advantage of Government assistance. When our offer was formally accepted, we were already on the move, but I seriously underestimated the energy that would be required for the process.

Our broker suggested that Enterprise would be the slow ones. However, once the offer was accepted they were like lightning. They were so keen to get the deal done, I worried that we might have agreed to pay too much!

Getting Barclays to agree to use a surveyor who understood the licensed property business took ages, and although he came up with the perfect valuation for us, it took four weeks for the report to get to Barclays.

With a week to go and a £70,000 deposit required with exchange, Barclays could still not give an unequivocal yes to the deal. I forgot to tell Ann that we exchanged and parted with the deposit when we weren’t absolutely sure of the mortgage — nervous times! On 27 September, the day before we had to complete, Barclays said they just needed one more form to be signed for my authorisation to send the money to our solicitor. Brilliant!

Barclays eventually released the money late on the 28th, but it didn’t appear at the solicitors. Panic all round and an agreement between both sets of solicitors and the bank was required, guaranteeing the money on Monday 1 October, for the deal to be completed on the due date. Where was the money? They had sent it to our pub current account where it sat over the weekend.

Anyway it was finally sorted. And now, when the lump of money goes out each month, we know that it is effectively going into our pension pot, not to fund the borrowings of someone else.