Owning your own home

What a fucking day - met mortgage advisor last night, all cushty, no probs with anything on LTV, earnings or the like.

Only problem is that I've had a CCJ (unpaid parking ticket I didn't know about, correspondence went to my house while I was living at gf's), which I naively thought wouldn't matter - it was only a fucking parking ticket. It blew everydamnthing out of the water. For a while today, it looked like no-one would touch us at all - for the next 6 years.

Even my current lender wouldn't let me bring my mortgage if I moved house, despite earning more than double what I was on when I took it out and being much better off in terms of savings, assets etc.

As it is, we're there (at the moment) - but only due to an amazing performance by gf haranguing the mortgage advisor and him (great guy btw, if anyone wants a recommendation) sweet-talking his contacts at one of the lenders. Taking nothing for granted until it's in writing though... moving house is a horrible business.

^ Any chance of having the judgement set aside (using a form N244) or a variation of judgment (using a form using N245)?

Just started looking into that. Probably little hope as anything will have been sent legitimately to my registered address (though I'm sure I never got a summons).

On the plus side, if the gf ever gets shot of me, there's no excuse not to jump on the bike and wander the earth having adventures.

The woman in our new place has her next place lined up and it's empty, our survey is set for Monday, hopefully shouldn't take loads longer.

As part of or building work, we need a steel lintel across where a set of French doors and an enlarged doorway to the kitchen. Our builder has said he can measure and make t no problem, but that to get it approved for building regs he should get it checked and have a plan drawn up by an architectural/structural engineer. His guy charges for £550. Our builder suggests this is optional/doable if and when we sell the house.

Is he right? What would the pitfalls of doing it like this be? Is this price normal?

Depends on how honest you are...

If you don't own up to having made any structural changes no one will ever know it wasn't there when you moved in. But the right/legal/safe thing to do is get building control to approve it. You can ask a structural engineer to spec it as your builder suggests and building control will accept their calculations, or most [all?] building control departments will do the calcs and spec it for you for a fee. Give your local authority a ring and ask for a price.

£550 sounds insane to a non-Londoner. Even in Cambridge's famous Cambridge, the least affordable place outside London, I'd want to pay half that.

You could get a tradesman who is registered under the 'competant persons' scheme.
If they are s registered member of the right body they could do the work then certify their own work and submit it to the council on your behalf.
https://www.gov.uk/competent-person-scheme-current-schemes-and-how-schemes-are-authorised#types-of-building-work

^That 'types of building work' looks like a list of finishes and services, not structural work?

Ahhh.

Yes.

Got to love that there's a 'competant persons' scheme.

His guy charges for £550. Our builder suggests this is optional/doable if and when we sell the house.

£550 seems massively excessive for what should be an hours work max for any competent SE, although your builders man will no doubt say it takes longer.

A qualified engineer in a medium sized practice charges approx £60 p/h. To put it into perspective we've recently had 1,500sqft house designed and detailed for less than two grand.

'competant persons'>
Sadly, the irony is your own.

Isn't there a self employed structural engineer on here?

FWIW the house we got fucked over on had building work like that (chimney breasts removed) and there were no building regs. Our solicitor suggested either we or the sellers could get indemnity insurance for a grand total of £100 that would allow us to sell the house - not sure if that is an option.

Some lawyers and lenders are OK with this, others not.

If I was buying a house that had structural alterations with no building regs I wouldn't be worried about insuring against the council making a fuss, I'd be worried that the work wasn't done properly. I would want an engineer to inspect the work, which would involved smashing things about to see what sort of metal had been put in.

I just ordered a couple of 125ml sample tins of Osmo Polyx oil tints ('terra' and 'black'). Let me know if anyone'd like them afterwards - we'll only be doing a small corner to see if one of them turns out OK.

Just back from the end of the full survey taking place on the property. Can't recommend doing it enough, you can ask the surveyor lots of questions, get a feel for what the report is going to contain and, in my case, get some of the conveyancing work started before waiting for the written report.

Just crossing everything that the vendors are going to pull out, a mate had this happen recently after fronting up for all sorts..

Is it really worth a survey if you're buying a property built in the 80's. My brother in law reckons as long as the bank is fine to lend them it will be fine and a survey won't tell you anything new.

@onyerbike We weren't there when our survey got done - though we actually only got the homebuyers report in the end. I still don't actually know what the survey said, but seeing as the builders are ripping it apart anyway we're finding out enough bad news as it is.

Magpie - can you afford to walk away on the largest purchase you're ever likely to make?

If so, then hey - who cares if the building is about to subside into a disused Victorian sewer.

The searches will pick up the sewer.

This was my initial thought. But the point is the bank actually has more to lose and won't lend on something that they won't get their money back on. Ie not about to disappear down a mineshaft.

Speaking to a builder the other day his opinion was as it's a new build (and part of a bigger development) it would have been guaranteed for the first 10 years and any problems would be been rectified already.

Yeah but what about the problems that haven't been discovered yet that should have been rectified already?

When we got our place, the mortgage valuation was c. £400, the mid-level survey was c. £750. In the context of buying a house, £350 seemed like too small a number to worry about. Even if there's nothing about to fall down, it's helpful in identifying where in the regular schedule of maintenance various bits of the house are.

I was in a similar situation when I bought with the option to upgrade the mortgage valuation to homebuyer's report (I think that's what it was called) for £300-£400.

It didn't affect my decision to buy or change the offer but highlighted a few things that have since developed into an issue. For the relatively small extra amount it's worth it.