Owning your own home

Anyone have a recommendation for cleaners in east london?

If it were me, I'd be keeping quiet about it. As long as you know you can tide yourself over until your next job starts. I'd be worried that you might spook anyone during the buying process which could make it flop.

Can give you the number of mine - she's ok though nothing amazing

If you can PM me her number, that would be great.

.

Bummer.

I tend to take risks. You need to evaluate what could potentially go wrong, and then how likely these things are to happen. I took some risks with the source of my deposit money (which I can't discuss here). I needed to, or I'd still be renting now.

Understood

amey i'd keep schtum if i were you.
sorry to hear about the redundancy

I'd risk it.

I suppose, with this change going on in your life, it might not be a great idea to buy a property anyway...?

Just chucking that out there. Always felt there are more interesting tech / design jobs US bound than here.

you sound like my dad

I'm nailing this crushingly dull advice shit

^ Comments removed, so I'm guessing here, but... this time last year I was in a position to buy with my partner, putting offers in and all the rest. Stopped as I wanted to switch jobs, to what should have been something better, and, well, it turned into a whole year of shitty ass low paid work (with luck ending in September)- if we had bought we would have been in serious trouble. Stability is good. Risks with deposits are bad.

Any suggestions on where to look for building insurance quotes?

Slightly complicated by the fact that the quote is for a house that has been separated into two flats so myself and the other flat need, I think, a joint policy. (We each have a share of the freehold.)

myself and the other flat need, I think, a joint policy.

You do. Otherwise it gets very complicated when the roof leaks or a car crashes into the ground floor flat and the first floor flat falls on top of it.

Start here for doing the right thing: http://bfy.tw/8cD

Stability is good. Risks with deposits are bad.

can you elaborate?

The mortgage is £260 less per month than the rent we are paying atm so considering the worst case scenario it'll be harder to pay rent than mortgage. The usual counter-argument is 'there is less risk' .. how? If I stop paying rent I'll get kicked out; if I stop paying mortgage I'll get kicked out. I/we have no friends or family here to move in with so if shit hits the fan (which it wont) it'll be one way tickets back home.

Cheers but that mainly brings up insurance firms with mutual in their name.

We already have a policy but it's been creeping up in price each year and I want to check it's reasonable.

The mention of roof leaking leads me onto another question, is that something you can claim under insurance (assuming it's just wear and tear). I'd assumed not.

For want of a better way to put it, my daily routine, and financial discipline was tied in with my then job. When the job switch failed, I had to take a fall back job until I sorted myself out (still not done) which paid substantially less- £10k ish. Whilst I saw this was possible, I didn't really believe it would happen to be honest. This put me on the edge of paying rent, just. Then something went bad with my family, which put me back a few grand from savings. Add to that the changes fucked with my head, and any financial discipline I had more or less disappeared, so I wasn't saving where I could. Which is fine while we're renting with the money in the bank- but we wouldn't have had that if we'd spent the deposit.

None of this is necessarily relevant to you, of course, but it's now a strong belief that work shapes habits, and changes should happen one thing at a time. I'm also a bit less laissez faire about contingency planning, and reading this thread, it seems that applies to houses more than most things.

That's what I meant - mutual insurance companies are a bit nicer and fluffier than private or public ones.

A leaky roof ought to be covered on insurance but I guess it'll be specifically mentioned in the policy wording.

If you can't pay your rent, you have savings to tide you over and you can move somewhere cheaper if it looks to be longer than that. It's hard to do that with a mortgage and presumably you'll have thrown all your savings at the buying the place...

Being a homeowner = taking fewer risks. Thatcher knew this.

For me the mortgage is a lot less than rent would be, I could actually take more risks in my current situation than I could if renting.

Ah, cheers. I thought you were suggesting that that was the name of the policy.

Initially for me it would be about the same as rent but there is much more value to me in that going into my own mortgage over someone else's. Deposits are always a bollox.

Back into chasing up two sets of solicitors. There is nothing apart from searches, lease info AMD exchange of contracts standing in the way.

I did get the first slightly miffed phone call from landlord yesterday. He has been very patient throughout the whole debacle, allowing us to just pay month to month. Even though he was miffed, he didn't give us any sort of ultimatum, he just wanted to be better updated. I admitted I could have told him more, we've been very lucky that he isn't an arse.

In theory, but isn't the reality that would have been your savings have gone to pay off your landlord's mortgage? Also, cheap places to rent in London are hard to find.

The other risk here @amey is that you step off the housing ladder and are unable to get back on it. I wouldn't want to make your decision for you but you need to balance that too. There are also other factors such as how employable you are and what demand is like in your sector/area of specialism. I.e. how easily can you get another job?

^ The pink pound will always pay well for rent boys.