Owning your own home

@brm will know.

I got the missus the Bosch Athlet a couple of Christmasses ago.

Just discovered my bastard tenants from last year didn't pay the last 2 months of council tax so just been dumped with a £249 bill, that along with not getting a final bill from the energy people they switched or in fact letting them that there were leaving and the a thames water bill they didn't bother to pay, has cost me nearly £500 fuckers

happy to have a look if you want to pm me

Folks who’ve had big work done, what’s the process? Recommendations (people/process)?

Plan on remodelling a house and moving a bathroom.

My go to forum wise man for this kinda thing would be @Fox

Why would it cost you anything? Isnt the tenant liable, or at least shouldnt they be, if the tenancy agreement has the relevant terms.

I (and probably Fox) would say "don't use Kensington Green"!
Don't go by online ratings. Often there will be a discount for a good review.

Let your neighbours know in advance. Get necessary permissions well in advance. Be nice and listen to all complaints. Deal with those you can, and prepare for chancers. We had one neighbour claim that our builders had got paint on his car which was 100 yards away. Which would have been feasible if they had actually done any painting at that stage.

I would also say don't hire a building firm and let them manage it all. They will give you generalists and it will take much longer because the guy who could have been plastering your bathroom is currently outside repointing the brickwork and that's going to take 3 weeks. That and the decent carpenter who was on the job at the start will be off to another job the next week and will be replaced by a muppet.

Project manage it yourself or pay one, and hire different specialists yourself. Some jobs require general builders, but some, such as plumbing, heating, plastering, electrics, tiling etc, need specialists and you can potentially have all those jobs going on at once instead of queueing up.

Institute penalty payments for overrunning the completion date. I'd have had our builder paying us instead of us paying them if we had, such was the extra time it took. And if we had we might have not had many days where there was only 1 or 2 people on site.

Get your designs, specs, scope of work and finishes planned in advance. Don't let your builder make those decisions for you. Where finish matters (e.g. top-coat paint, tiles, bathroom fittings, taps, flooring) source your materials yourself. Let your builder source the rest. If something is expensive and in limited supply (e.g. those lovely bathroom tiles you chose) then let them know so they take more care.

If something isn't good enough, complain and ask for it to be redone until you are satisfied. We got some excellent work done by Kensington Green but we also had some shit work I am still not happy with and will have to redo. Worse still they took the piss in a couple of ways: for example painting over rotten window frames I asked them to repair, and even painting over glass instead of reputtying 1st and 2nd floor window panes. They probably didn't expect me to climb the scaffolding and take photos of all their work!

And on that note, do climb the scaffolding and take photos of all the work.

Make sure that someone who is on your job every day speaks good English. This is so important! I lost count of all the delays and expense we had because there was some simple problem that could have been sorted quickly and cheaply if only someone had been able to tell us about it, or had the nous/language ability to go to fucking Plumb Centre and buy a £10 shower waste instead of not knowing what to do until the boss came round 4 days later.

Getting the money from the tenants would be hard as the deposit would have been handed back a while ago. You could just ask them for the money, but if they don't pony up, it's an expensive way to learn that you only hand the deposit back after everything is accounted for.

But in theory, if the bills are in the tenants' name, you could go back to the organisations and say 'it's not me'. Not sure what would happen if you do.

But in theory, if the bills are in the tenants' name, you could probably go back to the organisations and say 'it's not me'. Not sure what would happen if you do.

That's my thinking - if it's not your name on the utilities contract, or if the council have been suitably informed of the tenants names, then what responsibility do you have.

I think the council and utility companies just crush you with their giant fist.

Maybe with a forwarding address you could stall them....

Probably been answered before, but anyone used Tepilo (including their conveyancers, which you have to pay to opt out of)?

Much cheaper than Purplebricks and Yopa, since it seems like you don't need to pay the extra for London postcodes.

Plus you get Sarah Beeny's personal expertise, obvs.

Cheers for the extensive reply!

My question was a bit short and vague as I was on mobile but signed in on desktop now...

I dont even know how to kick off something like this - friends who had something similar done had an architect friend help but I don't know any personally. I have also been "designing" this for about 5 years so already have quite specific ideas about what I want done so wouldn't be knocking on an architects door with a big bag of money and just say "show me what you can do!".

But then they are experts in their field so...

I'm part of a group who manage a block of flats and over run works are our biggest problem, good shout on penalty payments.

I don't trust most people, so would prob source and manage most things myself. Work wise - the mindless stuff I can do myself and I have friends in most trades so the actual doing isn't the issue.

I imagine I will be a nightmare client.

Maybe at this stage I should be asking for architect recommendations... I might have ot track down my old land lords too, they were good architects.

From Dec 2015

1 Attachment

Looks like a giant electric toothbrush.

It shouldn't and yes the tenant is liable, and if the letting agent actually decided to honour the agreement then I wouldn't be out of pocket. The letting agency are being cu&ts about the whole thing and have been through the whole sorry painful episode. They won't give me or don't have a forwarding address for the tenants. A year later and I'm still getting bank statements/HMRC letters and other post for them. I have a lawyer friend who's willing to help me out.

That's thing the deposit was paid back to them without our knowledge. I have a sneaky feeling that they may of added me to the account without my knowledge, as we had post welcoming me to Green Star even though we weren't back in the flat yet.

It's a bitter pill to swallow, but I had two debt agency on my case and it was just taking longer to sort out and causing me stress.

... good shout on penalty payments.

I would be interested to know how people would enforce this. I work in an architects office and the amount of hassle they have dealing with contract over runs is amazing, and this is in a chain where (theoretically) every single contractors roles and responsibilities are laid out. Any change in spec from the client, or delay in materials being delivered etc. will be argued as a reason for late completion by the contractors. The architects always tell clients, an overrun is annoying right now, but in 9 months you'll have forgotten about it, and you'll be happy with the quality finish from doing it right. Trying to enforce a timescale is going to lead to cut corners etc., and someone else is always to blame.

I just don't see it working in a small scale project, and would be worried that it will flag you as a problem client which will scare off any good contractors.

Disclaimer: I'm not an architect nor a property owner

I would be interested to know how people would enforce this.

I'd like to know how any supplier would be cray cray to sign up to it, unless you offset it with bonus getting shit done on time payments.

That's why you have to not change the scope of work.
I was told 8 weeks. I knew that was optimistic, but even so I didn't expect it to be 4 months.
And it was only 4 months because we descoped a load of stuff and then fired them.

Letting agency in 'gutter cunts' shocker :(

Thats the other way of thinking about it... and I flip between the two.

I dont plan on trying to beat price down, I want it down well, in a realistic time frame, I have had rushed jobs done for cheap before and while 100's are saved you live with the results forever. If I can't afford it I won't get it done, rather than squeeze and skimp.

But to @bq s point, if you estimate X and the reality is X x 4 you did your job badly from the offset and the bad job now runs the risk of having an impact on anything else planned.

@Howard I wouldn't want to pay a bonus for something being done by a certain time, I want a job quoted, estimated and done well.

Aren't penalties unenforceable in any case? I always though that was a central tenet of contract law.

@chrisbmx116 I dont think you need an architect as much as you need a commercial consultant or QS in old money.

If you know what you want and have taken 5 years to get there then an architect may add something.... Possibly have an architect prepare plans to meet building regs etc.

Scope creep shouldnt be a problem as you know what you want (this is where youll pay as you know).

Dont be afraid to use a contract which hand in hand with a decent QS will deliver the project on time as the Liquidated damages can be set at a punitive level. Its surprising how muchof an incentive losing money can be.

Having done this a few times. Using a contractor who was unwilling to sign up to a contract was always a mistake. Sometimes ive used contractors without a contract and theyve been ace.....

Good luck

The rest is all project management 101, right?

I (and probably Fox) would say "don't use Kensington Green"!

I've used them twice since and have been happy. But I have got to know Alex very well and how to work with him. E.g. if the person/people on site don't speak English very well give him instructions to relay to them, send him pictures of stuff etc.

I wouldn't have been happy with the stuff you've mentioned. I think at the time they were overstretched and had too many jobs going on and simultaneously were having problems finding/getting decent people.