Owning your own home

Yeah, I guess it is down to how you want to use the space. We need a guest room as parents live a way away, and the back room would make a great kids room for the first couple of years.

I can't see the problem with a downstairs room myself, but I'm worried that we'd be reducing the value of the house. It's good to know that shouldn't be the case. We also want to try to leave as much as possible for future owners (or ourselves) in case people want to have a bathroom upstairs.

I would guess my credit rating is worse than yours and I got a mortgage.

The bathroom downstairs restricts the space. You cannot change the layout, convert it to a utility, extend and make it a garden room or whatever.
Plus it's no good when having guests over as who wants to wander downstairs, bleary-eyed, in a towel, when their host is preparing breakfast?

I think a 2 bed with an upstairs bathroom is worth more than a 2+1 without, but it would be worth more still if you could create a corridor and still leave a usable sized bedroom.

Check your credit score, you might be surprised, you might not. The web-based services are actually quite useful, and if there are any things you could do to improve your score then they should be flagged up clearly. I put off looking for ages because I was convinced that late bill payments and general financial ineptitude during my twenties would have made me less likely to get a mortgage than Nick Leeson. Turned out that a recent history of repaying credit on time was enough to get a good score once I'd cleared up a couple of issues (eg. incorrect electoral roll entry).

I agree - we wanted to put a corridor in ours (making the second room a bit smaller) but the stairs go the wrong way across the house & I can't be bothered to change that too. A lot of people do though, the popular option seems to be to move them so the bottom of the stairs leads directly to the front door rather than having them go across the house in the middle.

https://www.noddle.co.uk/ is OK for credit checks. Free to use and doesn't start charging a monthly fee after the first month or whatever.

well I'm making the move. selling our 1 bed flat in e3 and moving to a 2 (formally 3) bed victorian house in leytonstone. weve thankfully made good money on the flat and the guy selling us the house has made a fair chunk too. house was a good find, formally a 3 bed the upstairs back bedroom is now a massive bathroom. the kitchen is pretty big too, but need to get a new kitchen installed sooner rather than later. stripped floor boards, all that sort of thing.

exciting times.

Kirstie and Phil were sniffing round Leytonstone this week, in Bushwood. Phil went to see an agent in the area who said he'd had 52 viewings and 7 offers on one house nearby. Crazy. The local cake shop tweets whimsical shit:

https://twitter.com/WildGooseBakery

Gentrification bingo.

Vendors solicitors have finally got their shit together and got the management pack over to my solicitor who was apparently taking it home over the weekend to review. Searches have been completed and the results were supposedly sent out in the post to me yesterday (why no soft copies?). Hoping for a September move.

Blockquote

We viewed a place that had one hundred viewings booked in one day. Crazy.

I'm currently ripping out the contents of my new place in Leytonstone. Will follow up with details soon.

Not just London - had arranged for a estate agent to come round and measure up to put our house on the market, he bought a viewing with him and sold it for asking price there and then. Crazy consider I haven't even put a roof on the extension yet!

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/aug/22/lets-move-to-catford-south-east-london

... is one of the last places in the capital that's still reasonably priced

... yeah. oops, not any more.

We bought a house with a downstairs bathroom. You train your bladder to let you go back to sleep, especially when its cold in winter.

Not sure it'd be practical if/when we have kids but that's someway off.

or keep an old milk carton by the bed

London, finest city in the world (but you need to piss in a milk carton)

New flat has a downstairs bathroom but an upstairs WC that i'm hoping to bung a shower into

Our 3 bed in Leytonstone/Maryland also once had the bathroom downstairs, previous owners moved it upstairs, carving it out of the 3rd bedroom over the kitchen. Works well, snug bathroom with window for ventilation, and a cosy 3rd bedroom that can still just about fit a double. Using it as a study/ office anyway. After 8 months of being there, we finally got rid of the glowing nuclear pukey green paint covering most of the internal walls this week. Fun times!

we might be neighbours shortly! I'm hopefully going to be in one of the roads between cann hall and harrow road...

We're looking at a few places in that area too, there can't be many left now.

Did you end up having to pay a lot over the guide price or did you get a good deal? What agency was it with?

Leyton > Leytonstone

;)

wow lots of people buying in stratford / e15 area
what has drawn your attention to this part of the world

is it price, the newly arrived amenities or ... ?

maryland>Leyton > Leytonstone

I got what I consider to be a good deal but the guy is still making good money from the sale.

I think the house was on with douglas allen in wansted. basically the guy has chucked a lot of money at the house in the last year, rewired it, new bathroom, nicely decorated, new windows, guttering, stripped floors etc. I have paid very slightly more for the house than another one for sale in a road 2 down from mine but the difference in the quality of the finish and the style of the house is without compare. The layout also works better as the main bathroom is upstairs and v large. The kitchen is also v large but will need replacing.

its also only another 15 minutes on the commute through the olympic park than it would be if we stayed in E3. Win!

wow lots of people buying in stratford / e15 area
what has drawn your attention to this part of the world

is it price, the newly arrived amenities or ... ?

Price mainly, there aren't many other places on the tube network where terraced houses are still just about in budget. It's an area I know reasonably well as well, I can still commute easily to the edge of Essex, Leyton and Leytonstone High Roads seem decent, there's a TFC...

this isnt the one I'm buying (but its similar)

assuming they paid at or around the asking there arent that many places in zone 3 that you can buy a house of that size and style for that sort of money..

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-31253817.html?premiumA=true