Owning your own home

I actually really love that Looe house ^ can't imagine seeing a house with those views for a long time. Impulse purchase without viewing?

Winky?

If you can wait a year I’d expect either Brexit to have been called off or massive damage to house prices.

I actually really love that Looe house

Upkeep will be a massive drain.

Also, Looe in Summer?

Fuck. That.

Grockle filled nightmare.

can you pm me his details?

You make a compelling argument! It is certainly worth visiting and spending some time down there. Of all the places you linked to I would avoid Lipson, that is where my wife taught, and it was very much on the rough end of the scale. Also Torquay is the extreme of bleak in the winter, would pick Paignton over Torquay, good zoo.

I prefer Exeter over Plymouth personally, but does depend how close you want to be to the coast, as places near the coast round there are not all that great (Exmouth, Sidmouth) unless you go for smaller places like Holcombe and Budeigh, but then you are not in any sort of cultural centre...

That place in Looe is amazing. If it wasn't so far away, I'd be tempted.

Want a slower pace of life but not quite ready for full danzig james

It's not @dancing james. But it is @dancing james' German cousin.

danzig james

His motherrr?

I live in an end of terrace house, and I'd like to put a small bathroom (so frosted) window in the end. Next door is a block of flats. Anyone know if I'd need any planning permissions to do this (wondering if I need to be worried about people in the flats feeling overlooked or anything like that)

Edit: Forgot to click reply

You do not usually need to apply for planning permission for:

repairs, maintenance, and minor improvements, such as repainting window and door frames
insertion of new windows and doors that are of a similar appearance to those used in the construction of the house (note - a new bay window will be treated as an extension and may require permission). If new windows are in an upper-floor side elevation they must be obscure-glazed and either non opening or more than 1.7 metres above the floor level.

Ref: https://www.planningportal.co.uk/info/20­0130/common_projects/14/doors_and_window­s

My might. I went to twesledown.

Edit: yep. That's the same school innit.

I can't remember where I lived. Behind the NAAFI

I think that a Section 20 notification was slipped into the masses of legalese paperwork we are managing to extract from this Management Company. Knowing the way they operate they will probably think they have everything watertight (they are very good at this if nothing else).
Since the service charge demands were received its the first time any of the leaseholders have had any contact with each other and it has now gone from 1 unhappy/concerned leaseholder to 8 of us now. One chap went to the management company's actual office with his concerns and was given a wad (1" thick) of the proposed plans and the tendering details. Again no layman could fully expect to understand most of it and as I said they probably think they've got it sewn up.
The Management company have agreed and set up a meeting with us next week to discuss all this and before then we are trying to get together a pre-meeting meeting to make sure we are all on the same page because there are levels of understanding among some individuals about how this stuff works.
No one has paid the excess part of this demand (paid the usual service charge though).
RTM has been suggested and someone else has started a case with the Leaseholders Advisory Service but its a bit like herding cats.

I went to look at the place in Looe last year, Views were excellent, it was in need of complete renovation and access/ parking was poor.

Covenant. Jeez. I'm looking forward to that.

It's just a pretentious albeit technically correct term for the clause in a lease which says what you can and can't do with the property. They're generally fairly easy to read.

Leaseholder Advisory Service are fairly good if you get the right person, but they're not exactly on the side of the leaseholder. The advice I got from Leasehold Knowledge Partnership (who are less well resourced, but are FIRMLY on the side of the leaseholder) when I asked about destabilising a problem freeholder was to:

1. carry out RTM first
   
2. block any S20 major works during this process
   
3. once RTM is achieved, assign a block management company to investigate their shady behaviour from a position of strength
   
   

A block management company who are well resourced will be willing to take the freeholder to a Tribunal which is not something a freeholder wants because it's on record, it makes them vulnerable. Worth looking into.

If you go with company (I'm thinking of Canonbury here but I'm sure there are others) they'll waive all fees for RTM process if you use their block management services for two years. Worth considering and you can do it with 50% engagement. Nothing like a £3.5k bill to focus the mind.

'Grockle' shakes head

Thanks - useful info .
We will see soon how many of us wish to /can be arsed to fight this. I fear the talk of one person who talks of 'just selling up' and cutting their losses - to sell they would have to disclose the proposed building maintenance charge though.
Another concern is although there are 8 leaseholders now (40% of the block) what about the 60% that rent and appear to be quite transient ?
Its not really a 'community' .

Aside from the 'not Severn Estury' one Bristol meets all your criteria. But you got real coast 60-90mins drive away.

I spent around a year living in Exeter and I liked it there a lot - student population brings fresh blood/artsy stuff.

@CYOA Places like Fowey and possibly Lostwithiel could be worth looking at (depends how small town/village you want to go). They're in Cornwall but close enough to Par train station which is 4 hours to London. Only 40 mins West of Plymouth by car I think too and right next to the Eden Project which is immense at all times are the year.

Engagement is always the trick, and unfortunately it takes a bit of time, which is something it doesn't seem you have on your side. It took us the best part of a year to get 50% engagement, but we had to try a few different approaches - websites, email groups, meetings, what have you. Really we started out with two flats with similar viewpoints, and we just started bringing everyone along with us any way we could.

The main useful one which you can do right now is set up a WhatsApp group. To owner occupiers and tenants, you can frame it as being a place to create more of a community and share useful information. As relationships develop you'll begin to meet landlords, and while they tend not to care too much about quality of life (generally speaking) they definitely care about protecting their investment, so you can frame it in that way. The best thing about pursuing RTM (or Enfranchisement if you're feeling flush) is that it speaks to all those goals. Once you have control of your own money you don't spend it frivolously, and you get better results from it. And coming together as a group to fuck a bastard freeholder definitely builds community.

It's a pain, I've had to spend over an hour on the phone today to various residents, cajoling and convincing and calming, but it'll all be worth it when our service charge goes down, our quality of life and value of our flats goes up.

If I can help any please shout dude. It's intimidating to start with but it picks up its own momentum with time.

Yeah there is a momentum starting now and I'm spending so much time gathering the bits and pieces of peoples contact addresses / emails etc.
A WhatsApp group sounds good but again we have a mix of leaseholder folks whose communications range from hand written notes on the 'communal notice board' (that most people have no reason to pass by e.g. those of us that have our own front doors) , those that never open their mailboxes and those that don't actually live here - just rent out their flats.
I get the feeling that no one presently wants to be seen as 'the leader' which may sound a bit paranoid but I know how these BM Companies operate.

Anyway we'll see what happens at Sunday's meeting and ...

Once again thanks !

The only problem with WhatsApp groups is they just end up full of bantz

Yeah, it's hard - I think I'm probably 'the leader' here so I have to be really careful to try to build a consensus rather than just do what I want to do - because no-one wants to get the rep as a busybody. But someone has to do it if anything's to change.

Christ yes. Or passive aggressive 'SOME PEOPLE ARE LEAVING THEIR WASHING OUT OVERNIGHT' bitching. But the people who want to be practical often form subgroups. Our main group is permanently muted for me, but our strategy group and our evidence group (for antisocial behaviour etc) is much more useful.