Owning your own home

During the process of what was meant to be a minor house refurb, my builder discovered my floor was damp from a leak, so I've decided to replace.

Can anyone recommend me a floor fitter in South East London, or shall I head over to Home DIY and give it a go myself?

update on the flat we had an offer accepted on

knotweed has been found on the property and the lender has said they need proof that a 5 year plan is in place before they'll lend to us

the current owner appears to be claiming she had no idea it was there and has no intention of doing anything about it...we're not sure if she quite realises that nobody will be able to get a mortgage to buy her flat unless she does.

Bit of a nightmare.

We bought our place with knotweed and it wasn't really a problem, apart from the nervous wait to hear from the bank if they cared about it enough to approve the mortgage or not (they didn't care in the end, but did need to inspect it first).

Pretty sure you're right though, she has no chance of selling it to a mortgage buyer unless she gets it sorted first.

get a mortgage to buy her flat

This is true, but if it's a flat, then the freeholder will need to deal with it.

Hi. I was in similar situation. Knotweed is such bullshit, banks need to get a grip. Treatment will be about 1k iirc, tell her to crack on or it’ll never sell (except to a cash buyer obvs).

What Chris said.

Tell her nicely and /or the agent frankly that all lenders will need this and if she doesn't believe you, then just call one and ask.

i'm fairly sure she will come around

in the meantime i've asked the selling estate agent for further access so i can visit with a knotweed expert to determine the extent of the infestation

Is anyone else remortgaging at the moment? Looking at 5-year fixed and the broker I contacted can’t do any better than stuff I can see on comparison sites, which wasn’t the case two years ago...

We just remortgaged - Our broker found us 1% lower deals (although we aren't doing standard mortgages, don't have standard income, and are partly transferring).

We’re fairly standard all round I think. The best they’ve found is 2.09% with some cash back which compares reasonably (but is still worse overall) to 1.89% with First Direct.
It’s also taken me a while to work out a good way to compare stuff but total cost/capital paid off gives a handy ratio of value for money.

Late to the party, but I give you Royston.

Yeah, we got nothing better from brokers. Just took a new 5yr with Nationwide for reduced hassle.

Moved into our house in royston on March 29th.

You do get more for your money than Cambridge but u wouldn't say it's property price nirvana.

Already love the new house though. Don't miss where we were at all.

a good way to compare stuff

Spreadsheets, all the way. Most spreadsheet (Excel, LibreOffice etc...) will have a function that gives you monthly repayments based on mortgage type, nominal, interest rates, number of repayment etc... It makes comparing upfront costs & amortised costs very easy.

Thanks, I hadn’t thought to look for that. I’ve been using bank-supplied info sheets and the excel compound interest & regular payment function to work out capital & interest paid.
Main problem was distilling that into quantifiable VFM, hence ratio of total cost to capital repaid.

Extension question... who’s had one done and how much were their structural engineer? Got a quote for 1700 + vat which strikes me as a bit high for a side return only?

Ours was £900 all in, not a side return exactly as you know but we needed a big old piece of steel to support the side and a goalpost at the back too.

Cheers man. Super relevant, do you have the details you could share? Our quote feels about 20% too high based on yours I think...

£1100 all in but a proper extension (building reg included)

Cheers buddy, looks like I’m getting stitched up once a-fucking-gain.

Will inquire about finding our own.

Anyone able to share any recommendations for a structural engineer? @Fox ?

we used these guys https://www.structures-made-easy.co.uk/

Looking for someone to install a hardwood parquet floor in South East London. Anyone have any recommendations?

Cheers as ever bro.

Yup - will DM.