Owning your own home

@greenhell

I'd advise not using the topped up bank survey. I did this, and then the bank had ALL the info about the flat, particularly the damp issues and wouldn't lend, firstly, at all, then after arguing, without a caveat that I got a damp course (3-5k) fitted within 1 yr of moving in. Caused a while load of unnecessary hassle so will go for independent survey for future purchases.

fair shout. what was the eventual cost of the full fat bank survey?

Ah I had a different experience, our surveyor supplied the standard report to the bank and the full one to us only, but then there were no issues with ours, so guess that meant it never popped up.

Seems to be a conflict of interest here too, to my thinking.

Our solicitor advised us strongly to get an independent survey not 'top up' the banks one for this very reason. Glad I did.

I work in the valuations dept for one of the biggest lenders and can confirm that we only see the mortgage valuation part of the survey.

I didn't got for the full fat survey, went for the middle option (think it's referred to as the 'homebuyers report'?). Around £600 from memory, but that included the bank's valuation fee.

Some other quotes I for the same level of survey from other surveyors at the time (2014) were:

Tony Mason - £575
Dunsin Surveyors - £780
Maunder Taylor - £900
Talbot Surveyors - £810.
(all inc VAT)

yup we went HBR the first time too - in retrospect that was a bad call.

quote i got for an indy full fat report was 725. gonna pull the trigger.

Who's that with? I'm buying again soon.

http://www.collier-stevens.co.uk/

as vouched for earlier in this thread.

Thanks for the advice all. Vendors now agreed to work to a mid February completion, which given Christmas is looming is not far from where it would reasonably complete anyway. Happy days.

Woo!

For the overpayments calculation, it's better to compare what you owe without overpaying with what you would owe if you overpaid and then clawed back the overpayments, i.e. the amount of interest you have avoided paying. For bonus points work out what you'd have earnt in savings interest in that time.

You then have a direct comparison showing how much interest you cam potentially simply avoid being charged by overpaying. That then compounds to the end of your mortgage, and also the chances are you wouldn't claw back the overpayments either (don't miss what you don't have in your bank account).

My view has been to take the longest mortgage you can and then figure out what the payments would be for the length of mortgage you want and pay that. If you have cash spare after doing that and saving what you can at a decent interest rate then by all means overpay a bit more

Current bedroom ceiling

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Are you going full Heisenberg and storing bundles of cash on your ceiling joints?

If I had they’d be pretty fucked right about now

What are they paying at the moment? Last time I bothered with that shit I don't think it was worth it. Probably forgot to factor tax into that though or something dumb.

*not to scale

Probably forgot to factor tax into that though or something dumb.

Savings ISAs obviously do not pay much now. In the future, they might. Stocks and Shares ISAs obviously return better at the cost of a bit of risk (but not that much if you know what you are doing). They can probably beat the 2% or whatever you are paying on mortgage debt but like mortgage debt you need to be in the for the long term.

Yeah the tax free bit is what helps. There was a good discussion in the investment thread about ISA vs. Pension.

I currently don't have an ISA or a pension but I do have a place to live that's almost all mine. I know I should sort out the money side but I'm putting it off because I'm an idiot.

But you're echoing what I said in my original post - if you're a guru investor, you MIGHT make better money investing than what you'd save on the mortgage but then again you might not and at least I know I'm saving on interest so it's still money in the bank for me rather than someone else.

That's not supposed to look like that...

We had this in the hallway (5x4sqm) of our flat a while back. Entire ceiling just came down in the middle of the night with my bedroom next door. Rushed to the door, looked it and went back to bed and then went packed and left for a few days before I could face it. My sympathies.

Had shutters installed at the front of the house this morning.... Only the bathroom and hallway left before we've renovated the whole house since moving in Nov '15

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Who did you go with? We're looking to get shutters at the minute but unsure where to fit them my self in order to save some £££

Hillarys... still £££ (even after a sale discount) but they're really decent quality. 0% finance meant we've just kept the savings in the bank too.

Our next door neighbour went with a local one to us (Bromley) and they we're a similar price to ours but are flimsy by comparison. They also had to refit the downstairs ones as they didn't check which ways the windows opened before fitting...!