Owning your own home

hell yeah!

is that just for new builds though ?
will do some digging unless others can advise. As said before I'm clueless about this sort of stuff

Unless you're planning a loft conversion you don't have to worry too much about minimum U-Values and insulation thicknesses

It is several years since I insulated our loft, back in the days when the Big6 power companies fulfilled their energy saving obligations by subsidising the cost of rolled insulation through the likes of B&Q.
The 270mm was based upon a new layer of 200mm over the previous 70mm that supposedly lays flush with your rafters.
Older house, crappy loose fill insulation +/-40mm, so took the opportunity to double up, 2 layers of 200mm, laid N-S/E-W. Can only reduce your heating costs.

Nice 👍

Your circumstances may change, making you ineligible for mortgages / they may get more expensive. Taking out a small one to give you liquidity (6x monthly income or whatever) that you can overpay when things free up is a good idea IMO. There will always be things in the new house that need unforeseen cash.

Let kitchen gets fitted soon, so am beginning to think about replacing the saucepans, etc.

What brands are worth looking at?
We have a set of Judge pans that we've had for ~16+ years (and wanting to replace finally)

Are they still in good nick, why change them? I've got some 40yr old pans that my parents bought, they're still good as new...

Buy the best then take care of them...

Our solicitor was rather more decent than that: we exchanged two days before completion, and they knocked the calculated ISA bonus off their bill, requiring only that we completed the paperwork before completion.

Halp pls - managing a buyer's expectations...

I've had an offer accepted but the vendor is very shaky - constantly pushing to progress things more quickly than realistic with the mild threat that he has cash buyers waiting who would process things much more quickly and allow him to buy the house he wants to do up the chain.

Background:
I've been renting for almost five years. We're great tenants, and get on with the owner very well. He split up with his partner and needs to release the equity in the flat to buy a new home. That means that he needs to sell the property I rent from him*. So I decided to buy it. We set up a Notification of Offer letter, which formally accepted my offer with exclusivity subject to me completing certain tasks within a time frame...

I found a mortgage lender who'll lend on these types of properties (concrete), got a decision in principle, had my offer accepted by the vendor, made a mortgage application (which has been agreed), booked in and completed the valuation, instructed a solictor who's currently in touch with his re. the Agreement of Sale. That took < ten working days, which was within the time frame

I'm being told by the bank that it'll take 7 more working days for them to draw up the final mortgage offer, which gets sent to our solicitors to prompt the signing of the agreement. I told the seller that last night and woke up to a text basically saying "that's too long". This element isn't covered in the Agreement of Offer.

Is he just being a nervous seller or worse?

I know that English property law doesn't give the buyer any rights, but given that my offer has been accepted and I've completed the actions he's required me to do, he's just being a bit pushy isn't he?

*Compounding this is that as a tenant, I've also got rights. He's not issued a Section 21 notice yet, so even if he dumped my offer and went for a cash buyer he'd still not be able to complete until at least mid October when the property formally becomes vacant. I'm keeping that fact up my sleeve in case he goes postal and tries to back out of my accepted offer.

Sausage based advice much appreciated.

He's being a nutter, it's not a purchase off Amazon. Tell him to chill!

Ignore him. A week is nothing. Christ mine took nearly 6 months. You're flying. Don't lose any sleep over it as, as you pointed out, he's not going to be able to make a sale for months if the property is tenanted. Yours is by far the best option for him.

17 days! Even auction sales take longer than that. I’d just ignore him and let things progress. Keep him up to date of course. You normally have an estate agent to field the itchy vendors nonsense. They have to deal with this kind of thing all the time I imagine so have a few stalling / placatory tricks up their sleeves.... AKA lying.

Remind him of your intention to stay in the property in accordance with your legal rights if you don’t buy it. Hopefully that makes him chill out a bit...

@snowy_again yeah echoing what others have said.

If he's being nervous or twitchy just keep him in the loop and keep it nice. If he's on edge for whatever reason its best to keep things positive and tell him how quickly things are moving along - even if it feels slow for him.

Has anyone viewed the property? I wonder if the cash buyers exist.

Are you getting a good deal on the property? Don’t let him make you rush things.

You can’t go back in time and renegotiate.

Remind him of your intention to stay in the property in accordance with your legal rights if you don’t buy it. Hopefully that makes him chill out a bit...

I had my offer accepted in april, completing next week. and we have no chain on either side at all.

Thanks for the answers and reassurance. I'd hoped for some more sausage based negotiating options. I'll send him a text explaining that it was all in the letter I sent, and that the next step is getting the mortgage lender to draw up the mortgage contract that allows us to exchange, so he's very close to getting what he wants in a v short time table - given that we only formally agreed my offer on the 31st of July.

On other things: He's had one other potential cash buyer viewing. He's selling through an estate agent of the fat tied blagger variety - who failed to turn up for the viewing, so I stupidly ended up doing it myself. I explained to the bloke viewing that I was also making an offer, and we swapped contact details, and at the time he said that he wouldn't get into a bidding war with a current tenant who was looking to buy it. I guess house buying turns normal people into twazzocks, so I get the impression that the viewer ended up making an offer.

I'm getting a relatively good deal on price. Knocked £30k off the original price - but they are typically slightly difficult to sell outside of cash buyers (although he and my neighbours currently have mortgages on them). However, the location, transport links, local park and schools plus the size means it's way cheaper than anything else you can get within a few miles.

The properties don't come up very often as there's only a small % in the block who are leaseholders. Having said that, my neighbours 2 bed flat's also on sale at the mo, but for almost 95k more.

I'll think more of sausage based solutions.

So he has an estate agent, great news. Tell them he’s being a massive high pressure twat and that they need to explain how long this shit takes. Then deliver a box of frozen sausages to them for being so helpful so far.

Surely the sausage based solution here is to source them from Dugast/Herne Hill Market, get a stall on HH market, cook at home (barely, you want them raw remember), take them to HH market, over/under price them so no one wants them/do a bad job selling them, bring them home, reheat them inadequately for a number of hours at approx 20 Celsius, invite landlord over for dinner to thank them for everything, serve as a cassoulet, with a lovely wine sourced from Dulwich Vintners.

I guess house buying turns normal people into twazzocks, so I get the impression that the viewer ended up making an offer.

Estate agent probably encouraged them to. An offer isn’t a bidding war.

RIP shitty, patchy grass garden.

Come at me, tiles!

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Anyone dealt with Yopa? Are they as poop as they seem?

Good choice of plants there too.

In these sort of issues I find that texts between the parties aren’t a particularly good way of communicating. Maybe suggest that you move to email to keep things a bit more formal - then he’s less likely to send shitty little messages that will stress you out.

Ps he’s being a dick.