Owning your own home

Allotment at the back of the garden ?

Burial ground

^ lol

^^ yarp. OG's only but our name's on the list. Someone needs to kark it before our number comes up.

Leave some poisoned sausages in one of the sheds?

We nearly bought a house that backed onto the allotment I was on at the time. In Lee.
I thought it was a bit too summonable .
Keep hassling the council ( Lewisham ? ) - people are always dropping out ( not dead )

Had a mortgage valuation report back and the lender's survey identified non specific "structural movement" in the building and want a full structural survey carried out to determine if the movement is historic or progressive before approving the mortgage.

Should I be pushing for the seller to bear some/all of the cost for this? Just seems mad that I have to pay for a full survey but then have no power to actually carry out potential remedial work to ensure I can get the mortgage approved.

Slightly more complicated by the fact that it's a shared freehold so structural works would require the other freeholder's consent and potential financial contribution?

Best intro to the new neighbours ever.

Friends were in a similar situation recently...

They paid for the entire survey thing, not sure if that is what a "full structural survey" is? £1000. Turns out the place was a bit of a mess structurally and requires a lot of work and money to make stable.

They didn't have any extra money, and tried to negotiate a large reduction in price, seller told them to jog on which they did. Last I checked he had had to drop the asking price by 25k and it still hadn't sold.

Not sure thats any use, my take away is you have ot pay it all but use the results to haggle, if nothing is agreed upon then see the investment as not wasting six figures on a place that needs loads of serious work.

Would imagine that you bear the cost, and negotiate with the seller to take the cost of remedial works off your offer.

Yeah what I assumed, its just that the work would likely have to be completed before any mortgage offer is made so would require the seller to pay up front which I don't think they'll want to do.

Also possible of course that it's been like that for years and isn't a problem at all, the lender is just covering their back.

@chrisbmx116 It's called a level 3 building survey these days but is the same a full structural survey...could definitely save us a packet down the line but having lost a load on a purchase that fell through once before I'm a bit reluctant to piss another grand up the wall just to find out whether the bank will even lend on the place, before we get into negotiations on fixing anything with the seller

Chances are that if it’s that bad the seller and estate agent will know about it and may already have a copy of a structural survey available to read. You’ll still need to do your own at some point but it’ll give you an idea of what you’re dealing with.

Yeah that's kind of what we're hoping, if it's existing movement that's unlikely to change then there won't be a problem, but if it's new movement it will need sorting out.

cheers all.

That’s a good point actually... where are you buying (to rule out the place my pals saw)?

It's in SE4

Phew, no...

Found a house, got offer accepted, had a survey done (the medium one), which indicated damp in various places. We knew we had to get a damp specialist contractor to check out the place but the lender was being really slow with processing mortgage application, so we didn't book the expensive damp survey until we got the mortgage offer. Finally had the damp survey done yesterday, the damage is worse than we expected and they estimated 17-20k to repair it as they have to put up scaffolding, take down parts of roof and wall, etc. We're going to make a lower offer to cover the renovation but I'm so scared the vendor will say no.

The damp is due to poor roofing and guttering, i.e. current owner's negligence in maintaining the property (they live abroad and the house has been rented for years), none of which was mentioned in the advert or by the estate agent.

Anyone been in a similar situation? We were thinking of offering 15k less than the offer we had accepted, is that ok or too high/low?

Have you got quotes from builders?

Get some quotes from builders. Average them out. Put that in front of the vendor.

So it costs £thousands to get it done. But that doesn't factor in the massive ball ache to get it done. Bear that in mind.

Must be a fair few Victorian buildings in London that have moved around a bit over the years.

Good point. We're currently renting with a couple of months left on the contract so could do the work before moving in.

One or two I would assume, but ya never know (just checked and the place my pals were looking at is of the market).

£20k for a new roof sounds like quite a lot... I guess it includes all new rafters? At least, if the problem is water ingress from top down it's probably a fairly easy (expensive) fix. But definitely put the information in front of the seller.

That's the lump sum for all the repairs, roof, wall, gutters, lowering floor and paving in the garden, etc.

Buying a house in the UK is not for the impatient or for the faint-hearted..

Guess this is probably the most appropriate thread for it...

Anyone able to suggest a solid man with a van/removals service? Moving from Kennington to Herne Hill; got a room's worth of stuff sans bed/wardrobes etc, but if there's anything in the area via Freecycle available I might want to hire for an extra hour or two to grab it.

Green Man Van

Cheers, will have a gander

We used Rocket Van per someone here's recommendation I think. Really nice professional service. Took ages longer than estimated but I think that was just cos of all the stairs and crazy amount of stuff, rather than them being slow.