Well, we had the chap from the Halifax estate agency around yesterday. Not the most talkative bloke but he gave us the news we wanted to hear.

Basically, in the 9 years that we’ve lived here, our house as doubled in price. Assuming we get a buyer to pay this price, we’ll be able to pay off the mortgage and the odd Visa balance whilst still taking enough money with us to Australia to live off (if need be) whilst we get settled and start looking for jobs.

Worse case is we can drop the price sufficiently to make the house a ’steal’ whilst still taking a few bob out to Oz.

We’re being realistic that it may be a while before we can get a buyer, however it feels good to know the kind of money we may be looking for. Spring is in the air, the gardens and the house has never looked better and we’re feeling pretty optimistic about the whole thing.

We have a second valuation next week (which we hope will confirm a similar price), once we’ve had that, the house will go on the market with an asking price of the average of the two.

Things actually seem to be happening now which is perhaps as well as our target move to Aus date of September 2006 is looming!