Owning your own home

Ha, very good.

Agree. I used someone in North Yorkshire for a purchase in London. Very thorough and careful when dealing with a fairly dodgy vendor. My experience was: Small practice + comparatively high price of my property = good service.

How much did that cost, if you don't mind me asking?

Cheers. Doubt there would be enough interest from them upstairs but I've always wondered and not bothered to look into it.

Does the freehold have to be "for sale" or can you just ask to buy it?

You can force the freeholder to sell if there is a majority of leaseholders who want to. Collective enfranchisement.

And can one estimate the value in some way?

There was an online calculator that I found on Google. I think it estimated between £9-12k per flat for me.

Any recommendations for someone to redo a bathroom in Stoke Newington? Small bathroom, needs retiling, a shower partition plasterboard wall knocked out and replaced with a cubicle. Any ideas on what the labour should cost as well?

Thanks - I sort of guessed as much. Good to get some reassurance. If any of your multiple jobs fall through ...

Currently in process to get same done. Used mybuilder and really recommend it. Our cost was £1700 for labour only plus £500 supplied material plus the rest of the materials (tiles, taps, toilet, sink, shower and enclosure etc.)

Bit of a strange question, anyone has done a credit check on themselves? It's all in relation to my planning on my possible home buy. I know banks will do it etc but I want to know before they do.

Yes, I've used Experian Credit check. You have to take a monthly subscription then cancel:

http://experian.co.uk

I use noddle, free to use, don't have to worry about having to cancel

In my experience...

Experian has the most data and is used by almost all lenders. It is the only agency that has a 100% record of my credit history.

Equifax is used by roughly 40% of lenders, usually in conjunction with Experian. It has most of my credit history.

Noddle and Call Credit are much less widely used and have the least complete picture of my credit history.

All are available free but Experian and Equifax are on one month trials that you need to cancel.

Mrs tv has asked for quotes on mybuilder

Cheers guys, I shall give it a go. I am worried that my name hasn't actually been 'cleared'. Nothing dodgy here but I opened an account with I think Lloyds TSB few years ago, and they gave me a complementary credit report that led to nothing but troubles - they got my identity mixed up with someone who has the same initial and surname as me, but lived in other parts of London and has a different date of birth. While my credits were ship shaped, this other person's was a mess. She took out number of credit cards and basically paid off the last one with a new one... owes hundreds of pounds to various companies etc...

On the upside, that other person probably got a free and pretty positive credit boost.

I was told my name had been cleared, but never trust a bank...

Use quidco and get paid for the free trials of the credit check services! (see moneysavingexpert etc)

cheers! :-)

Be wary of the type of searches they do, there are some that can do harm. Getting a few free quid may cost you more than that.

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/hard-inquiry.asp

Experian, CallCredit and Equifax all provide statutory credit reports, costing £2 (they are required to do this by law). You should get all three (and on a semi-regular basis - I get mine every year or so).

You can pay a lot more for credit checks from the same companies - the only difference between these and the statutory report is that they will include arbitrary scoring criteria to your credit history, and come up with an arbitrary result.

Be aware that your credit score will be different for different companies - they mostly all use their own proprietary scoring methodology and criteria, and will probably only ever share a few of the factors with you.

A paid-for report will be an approximation of the banks' check at best.

Experian, CallCredit and Equifax all provide statutory credit reports, costing £2 (they are required to do this by law).

The value of these is to see where you have shared financial history, or where your credit history is incorrect, so that you can have corrections made / notes made on your report.

I've used Clearscore via the iPhone app. They use Equifax data, but free

Mortgage finally offered. Took Nationwide about a month - Must be the influx of applications prior to the Stamp Duty rise.

Anyway, had a query back from our solicitors regarding how we want to hold the property. On the initial form I sent off to them we chose to be Joint Tenants (although we didn't contribute 50:50 to the deposit, it was nearly equal) - We are currently engaged and hope to get married in the next year or two. However our sols have emailed to check that we definitely want to do this.
Anybody else been in this situation? I think I read that it shouldn't cost much/anything to amend this in future - Would it be more sensible for us to be 'tenants in common in equal shares'?

We have 2 children together and no will in place FYI.

Our solicitor drew up a joint tenancy agreement, cost us £50 or something, mainly to reflect that I put in the deposit and would be paying a larger share of the mortgage.

You should get a will in place, especially whilst you're not married.

@andyp is spot on. A very quick doc like this is very beneficial. We did the same thing when we bought ours.

Wills are very quick to do and with 2 kids you need to be clear what happens if both of you die. Horrible worst case scenario but do not expect social services to do the sensible thing.