Owning your own home

Ask the sellers for a Statutory Declaration that they have parked there unhindered for 15 years and get them to pay for an insurance policy that indemnifies against your/the mortgage company's loss if the council take the parking away. Such a policy will probably be a few hundred sovs.

Bear in mind that generally the insurers won't provide cover if there's been contact with the person entitled to the benefit of the covenant, so either try to get consent or get the indemnity cover - it's either/or.

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Delete all your posts. Deny all knowledge. Change your name. Unless they recorded the call you're in the clear.

I was going to suggest such things never become problems but @Bernhard 's post proves otherwise.

Dropped curbs - these are £24, much cheaper than several grand:
http://www.tanks-direct.co.uk/traffic_management/road_safety_speed_ramps/kerb_ramp?gclid=CjwKEAjw9OG4BRDJzY3jrMng4iQSJABddor1dGhVsCyF50R7rDNTspcbHIg6xssnjKuwftK2kkgv2hoCaV3w_wcB

If the council ask any questions you airlifted the car in with a Chinook.

But look shit. Lowering a kerb via the council cost me £560 in 2010.

I'm wary of dropped curbs since a mate of mine who lived in a basement flat was flooded out a few years ago. His flat was towards the bottom of a pretty gentle gradient, and one of his neighbours got a dropped curb, about three or four doors away uphill.
Gentle rain drained away as normal, but one day there was a proper cloudburst and the water flowing along the curb from up the hill took the path of least resistance when it hit the drop. The neighbours had a lovely stream, diagonally through a couple of gardens, and he came home to find a foot of water in his flat.

We should be completing on Monday (I can't believe it's actually going to happen). We had an email from the seller's solicitors this morning asking if we wanted the sofa, wardrobe, table, bed and "picture hanging on wall" for 2 grand. What fucking planet are some people on? Told them to do one...

It'll cost them way less to get rid of it.

We had similar - a kind offer to buy their wardrobes for several hundred smackers. Told them to take a hike and they ended up leaving them anyway (which was quite useful actually, whilst we set ourselves up).

My buyer has decided he's not exchanging until he's had an answer from my landlords on a really pedantic question about buildings insurance. On a leasehold fucking flat where he doesn't need it and cannot claim on it. This has now pushed my completion date back at least a week. I'm sure it's completely coincidental that the cunt has decided to go on holiday the week that we were due to complete.

Should have told him to fuck off when he chipped me on the price.

You'll probably find half that stuff still in the place when you get there!

I completed on a 3-bed in Forest Gate on Thursday and picked up the keys on Friday. It has taken us 3 months from first viewing the property to completion.

A cautionary tale; we originally bid exactly the same as another couple for the property. We both raised our offer by exactly the same amount, twice. The estate agents agreed with the seller that to avoid us continuing in a bidding war we would have a 'survey race' - the first person to have their mortgage company call the estate agent to book in a survey on the property would have their offer accepted. Effectively, this would show who was in the position to advance the sale quickest, and the seller was keen to move fast. We won, and our offer was accepted.

The following day the other couple put in a bid £7,500 higher and the buyer accepted it. We were obviously fucking furious. We matched the offer and it was accepted, but it left us pissed off with the other couple for not accepting the 'deal' that we'd all agreed re the survey race, and for pushing up the price, and we were pissed off with the buyer for also reneging that the survey race would be final.

I don't know what we could have done to avoid this, but I'd never heard of such a thing so thought it was worth sharing.

I'm now looking for a structural engineer to have a look at moving a load bearing wall, if anyone has any recommendations.

Are you sure there was another couple?

Agents often invent another couple in order to get your offer up.

It's one of the techniques that was employed by a guy I worked for and fundamentally why I no longer work in that line of business. The manager and the sales manager expected me to follow suit and lie to potential buyers.

Something I wasn't prepared to do.

We went to two viewings with 'the other couple' and awkwardly shuffled around the property with them. I don't think Haart Estate Agents are clever enough to fake it - their bullshit is so strong it's generally easy to spot.

Yeah, that definitely happens. Ghost bidders or whatever you call it.

A similar thing happens in auction rooms where they "take bids off the wall".

I also arrived in the house to find a fault with the boiler. The estate agent, Haart, said it wasn't their problem and told me to discuss directly with the seller. Then said he'd spoken to the seller and said they would not pay for it as it was working when they left. C***s.

Weirdly at auctions it's legal, up to the reserve price.

Squeal! Completing on Friday if all goes to plan.

It's mad. I pretty much don't leave absentee bids anymore.

ALL agents are guilty of underhand and nefarious practices.

The agents are working for the people who pay them - the vendors. Which doesn't mean that they're supposed to fuck you over, but they are supposed to get as much money for their client.

I am selling and buying though the same agent (Hamptons North Dulwich FWIW). I wonder if that prevents them from advising me as a vendor on the nefarious ideas, for fear of showing what they are doing to me in return?

Anyway, this far I would recommend them unreservedly.

Don't credit them with the same foresight and understanding of psychology as normal people

At least you got the place in the end, shame you had to experience that to get there.

Where abouts in Forest Gate are you?

We should be completing today... I'm waiting for something to go wrong.

We were supposed to have a look round on Saturday to measure a few things and check the place wasn't fucked now the tenant has moved out. Cunty chops estate agent didn't turn up though did he...

I've tried to change my pre-conceptions of estate agents but they are making it really hard. I don't think there's been one thing that they've done professionally.