Owning your own home

Assuming it still falls into whatever LTV band you're aiming for then it's as simple as telling them the increased amount when re-mortgaging.

Hmmm, this project does require quite a few walls removing and some fairly big expanses of glass. Maybe it's not complete bullshit after all... Gah, stupid expensive everything!

anything north of £100k does sound expensive though (unless you live in a mansion of some kind) - do you have it itemised? often it can be one thing specific to the project, like a really expensive bit of structure over where a wall used to be or a new opening, or foundations dealing with a sewer or something else in the ground. windows, especially big windows, are expensive.

Afternoon all

Got another weird query. What happens when your landlord ignores an LVT decision? In 2011 an LVT found that it was unreasonable to charge residents for parking, specifying clamping charges, on two grounds [a) that residents had paid for the car park to be installed, and b) there's no provision in the lease for such a charge].

However we still continue to be charged fines for parking; one of my residents has over £10k in parking fines. What can we do when they ignore tribunal decisions? Just take them back to tribunal?

A County Court can enforce the Upper Tribunal decision, IIRC

They're like stilts, keeps the house off the ground and away from all the snakes, spiders, other things that wanna climb into your bed and kill you... 😊

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Yup pier and beam. Provides a nice safe home under the house for all the things that will kill you. Same design kept my parents house dry during Harvey. Swings and roundabouts innit?

Fingers crossed for the Castillo de Slain.

Can't the creepy crawlies climb up those stilts then?

You do realise, you'll have to get a rocking chair and maybe a crappy old guitar to leave outside the front door, right?

He's got dozens of crappy old guitars already.

They put a simple large sheet of metal in the way - bugs cannot make it around it.

Exchanged on Wednesday, whoop, whoop! Doing the chaps payment for the deposit was pretty terrifying, with the painful 2 hour wait for my solicitor to tell me I hadn't just sent the cash into a black hole.

Nice one! Yeah, I shat bricks at that stage too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nVk25ZvTkU

Pretty much this.

Looking forward to being a fully fledged member of the thread!

I wish we had a veranda on the place we're buying, sadly we don't but it is something we'll probably look at in the future... We get a nice view of the mountains to the west so that would be a good spot for one...

If all goes well with the purchase we'll be investing in some solar panels straight away, energy prices are crazy here considering the abundance of free sunshine we get every fucking day...

Either just ignore the demands for payment, or issue a claim in the local County Court for a declaration that the sums aren't payable, relying on the LVT decision. Assuming that the sums in question haven't been paid. If they have, it's more complicated as you'd have to bring a claim in unjust enrichment to recover them.

Awesome. Curious to hear about the solar panels when you get to that stage.
Makes sense to have 'em, seeing as we get a free fusion reactor every day and could probably cover the cost after 2-3 years...

Yeah he's fortunately not been daft enough to pay so far. I think he wanted to take it to another LVT and effectively present it as something he'd be happy to resolve through a formal REsidents ASsociation if the freeholder would only recognise it, and hope that the LVT would push them to recognise. But that approach worries me as they might find differently to the first LVT - the one which originally considered it unfair to charge for parking. If so his defense goes out the window.

The LVT isn't going to take part in any sort of horse-trading like that. The LVT has already made its decision on the parking charges, and so isn't going to revisit that point unless there's been a material change of circumstances. If he wants to use the LVT ruling on parking charges as a negotiating lever, a claim in the County Court for a declaration is the better way to achieve this, I would've thought.

The owner of our mews courtyard has agreed to sell it to us.
I'm going to own not just a house in London, but a road. Albeit one with just two houses on.

Two years ago I never thought my life would be anything like this. It is crazy but excellent.

Does this mean you win the Road Tax arguement?

I thought they did kerbside auctions in Oz, or is that just a Sydney thing? Friend told me about the experience. Said it was horrible eyeballing the other person in what was basically the front garden!

You might have a point there. I think the space the freeholder is arguing from is that the residents previously challenged the clamping, and were vindicated on same, so he no longer clamps but has moved to fines.

But to me the tribunal judgement (that the residents paid for the car park and there's no provision in the lease to charge parking fees, so therefore it's not reasonable to expect us to pay for parking now) feels broad enough that it covers both. But I'm not a legal person so I may be totally off base there.

With a lot of these leasehold law so much of it feels legal but not ethical or fair in any way.

That's exactly what auctions are like apparently, this was just a humdrum make an offer to the real estate agent kind of a deal... I'm anxious for it all to go through, we've had shit luck trying to get a house up to now...

The test of 'reasonableness' is the one that the First Tier Tribunal will always apply, and it will always be looked at in the context of the lease.

If the judgment was that the lease has no provision to make a charge for parking, that's pretty final and there's little room for the freeholder to argue otherwise, beyond appealing the decision at a higher court - which it seems they didn't bother doing.

Other than seeking a court injunction (rather than FTT judgment) against the freeholder the obvious options would be to go for RTM / enfranchisement, as it seems you're already considering, or apply to the FTT for appointment of a manager.