Owning your own home

The scaffolding went up today for the loft conversion!

Scaff always goes up quick. Getting it gone is the problem.

Did you go with Dan James in the end?

Guys who did my place were pretty speedy. I got home one night after a few beers and stood looking at the house in confusion before realising the scaffolding had gone without them even mentioning it to me.

Make sure you challenge the reasonableness of the managing agent's fees in the service charge accounts under s. 19 L&TA 1985. It's your opportunity to say the useless fuckers shouldn't get paid on account of being useless, lazy and unhelpful.

Who would judge whether or not they have been useless?

@dammit Tribunal? Or the building's co's board of directors?

Possibly only worth it in extreme cases.

Talking of which, I received a breakdown of costs that made up the 33% service charge deficit I received.

à Main entrance door handle repair: £59.00
à New door handle for the Communal Door: £56.00
à Repair of the lock on the Communal Door: £151.32
à Main entrance door repair: £70.00
à Repair of the lock to the electric cupboard: £47.06
à Overflowing sewage drain repair: £351.00
à Repair of Communal Passageway light: £109.81

Total = £844.19 plus VAT at 20% = £1,013.028 (divided by 3 = £337.67)

I hope that you will find this information satisfactory. Should you still require further information, such as receipts, I would need to forward this over to the Home Services Manager as I am unable to obtain these personally.

Hmmm. Now I'm not sure what to do about this. Going in to this, I believed that a single costly repair triggered this shit, but now it doesn't look like that was the case - although why the communal door was repaired four times in the period of 12 months I'm not sure.

Any suggestions?

Sadly the directors are such big fans of the managing agent that he has not had to purchase, or indeed use, lavatory paper since 2007.

Yep. It was really helpful getting to see yours, thank you

Do you know what your managing agents' official complaints procedure is ?
Do they know what their official complaints procedure is ?

If yes then use it.

It would be to send an email to Martin, who is the owner of the agency.

#flatlyf

Fuck this. I want a house.

1000%

Preferably without giving the government £60,000 in stamp duty for the privilege

Houses bring their own problems... But, yeah, they're great...

Preferably without giving the government £60,000 in stamp duty for the privilege

2000%

£43,750 in stamp duty on a couple of places that look nice near Winchester. Fuck me.

1st world problems...

Well, yes - this is the owning your own home in a first world country (mainly) thread.

If you've got £1m+ to drop, it seems a little petty to moan about the 4.4% purchasing tax.

Edit: and as someone who recently had to pay a large (not that ^ large admittedly) chunk of stamp duty, it seems to me to be a reasonable way to raise revenue.

But it's a one off cost on each move; it doesn't have any capital value after spending it but it prevents people moving e.g. to downsize or because they can otherwise afford to upgrade.

Imo an annual roperty tax would be a better way to tax real estate - it wouldn't dissuade people from moving and would also have a chance at capturing the value obtained by people sitting on appreciated assets. Rather than loading the cost onto the purchaser (who is already going to be the one funding any capital gain made by people who've seen their properties increase in value).

Annual property tax would be a game changer.

I can see the argument in favour, however it would have to be part of a re-think of the overall tax burden.

Or just, you know, capital gains tax on sale.

Admittedly this might dissuade from renovating and improving property.

If you've got £1m+ to drop

Not in old Saino's bags under the bed I don't, I'd need a mortgage and the £43k for Stamp Duty puts a fairly big hole in the deposit that I'd have.

I don't know what my flat would sell for in the deflating market of the moment, but let's say I exit with 300k - that means stamp duty and fees takes that down to £250k.

This puts me right on the edge of the LTV boundary for most mortgages, rather than having a margin.

Also, having just checked - HSBC will only lend me £712,500, so I'm overstating my purchasing power - which probably is a first world problem.

Happily, it's still possible to buy a house for less than £1M.

Perhaps surprisingly, average property price in England is still under £250k.