Owning your own home

I am already contemplating just pulling out and putting an offer in somewhere else because the combo of vendor/estate agent/our solicitor is making me question whether I want to live in this world anymore. Would lose money on fees but a small price to pay to be spiteful.

That certainly looks like mid treatment knotweed. Also, slugs do have a go at the leaves.

The treatment takes up to three years before it is declared dormant. Each year it comes back it looks in worse and worse shape. A decent management plan will treat twice a year for 3 years and then check on it for two further years.

Also check that there is a 10 year insurance backed guarantee in case the company treating it goes tits up. That is the more expensive thing so the vendors could have cheaped out and just got the 5 year treatment plan.

DO NOT PULL IT UP OR CUT IT DOWN IF THERE IS A MANAGEMENT PLAN IN PLACE!!!!!!! They need the live plant to be able to treat it. If you destroy the plant you could void the plan and any guarantee. Otherwise, so long as the management plan and the guarantee is there you'll be totally fine.

Again, guess who just forked out for all of the above.

Best of luck to you! You've been waiting longer than me. It's hard to know who is working and who isn't.

Kicker today - I get a call from my estate agent 'buyer is ready to exchange' so I call my solicitor and say 'lets exchange!'
She says 'Let me look over your file and I'll call you back.'

...still waiting.

Thanks all.
Yeah, not too worried about it (we haven't even made an offer yet) and I read mortgage lenders etc are a bit less hysterical about it these days.
Will make sure the necessary guarantees/insurance is in place if we get that far.

As our case also involved neighbours, we had two companies out to quote and both said it was easily managed, mortgage lenders seemed to historically use it as a spurious reason not to lend. The instances of it actually causing damage are very few and massively far between. A rose bush planted next to a house has more ability to cause damage than JPW.

You are right, they are being less hysterical. The plan and guarantee are just like a final stamp to keep everyone happy.

I need to catch a small slug that has gone bin-wild on a rug in our front room. What’s the best way to coax it out of hiding without encouraging more to join it?

Could be worse - two people I work with have had their small commuter-town but reasonably priced houses on the market for over six months without a solid sniff.
On that note, how are you getting on @chrisbmx116 ?

I still love my house despite the slight money pit aspect (and live-in slug). Not sure how much I’ll love it when it needs repainting externally.

Japanese knotweed by the sounds of it

Can anyone recommend a south London solicitor please? @BRM?

Unless you have houseplants, indoor slugs tend to dry up and die quite quickly... They also love the smell of yeast/beer so a bit of soggy bread or kitchen towel soaked with beer should do it. Certainly brings them out of hiding in the garden! (If it doesn't appear it's probably died under a bit of furniture...)

Hah!

That’s the thing I can’t work out wtf it’s after, there’s nothing edible in the room! I’ll try some soggy bread in the fireplace.

Just had an offer accepted on a one bed flat in SE London...suddenly getting the fear. Big time.

Once I get over that though, any good recommendations for local surveyors?

anybody got experience of having a door frame replaced? My back door is rotting through [titter]

sorry pal - not really (unless you are talking property litigation...)

JFC.

Our vendors want to complete while we are out of country - we are first time buyers, currently renting, there may be some overlap with our last month's rent and first month of mortgage, so vendors made offer of a small lump sum to facilitate earlier completion than we wanted (we wanted to complete when we came back).

Fine.

Solicitor tries to do it as allowance, but broker points out that will take us over 90% LTV so the solicitor says no, can't be done that way. OK. Explain to vendor. Discuss via estate agent. New offer made, informal guarantee letter written, signed by all parties, cool.

But, now an email from our solicitor saying vendor solicitor has emailed them to say they are aware that we no longer wish to proceed with the agreement, can we confirm as this is only thing preventing exchange.

WTF. No. Why are these people telling their solicitor when they surely know they are meant to be doing this on the QT.

All the stress that left my body yesterday has returned... Estate agent for vendors now frantically trying to get vendors to guarantee to us that the agreement does still stand.

Rant over.

I assume this is part of the fact the agreement is informal - it has to be formally denied and you have to state in writing that it doesn’t exist.

Nah there wasn't anything like that in there. It was brokered by the estate agent between us and the vendor, noone else any the wiser until the vendors (reasons known only to them) told their solicitor...

informal guarantee letter written, signed by all parties, cool

I'm no solicitor, but I'm going to have a guess at saying it's not cool, and could lead to all sorts of problems if things go wrong elsewhere. If you're not doing things through your solicitors, you probably shouldn't be doing them.

Yeah. If the solicitor knows then they have to tell the bank, hence them wanting to confirm that nothing formal is in place.

Just reply to the solicitor confirming that’s true and call the vendor to confirm the informal side agreement...

Yeah, we've bitten the bullet and done that. It's just frustrating as they've caused this nagging sensation now that they're going to renege on what they've offered/agreed and use the confirmation via solicitors as a way to wriggle out of it.

They're either cunning or stupid and I don't know which one it is...

I'll let ya know where I am in 3 months time...

Some immigrants have moved into our garage

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Creating all sorts of noise in their forrin language

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wanting to get the roof insulation done this summer have been given a quote of £ 800.

I have no idea about costs but it seams quite high

3 bed victorian terrace for the idea of size has any one got a go to guy or can give me some idea if this is about right ? oh the house is in Stockwell / Brixton.