Owning your own home

Thanks folks. Good value quote from Halifax.

Argh, my skylight is leaking - not sure if we need a builder or a roofer, we had someone round before who said the skylight wasn't installed perfectly when it was built.

Any recommendations for a similar issue, south east London? We just want to get it sorted as water is getting in and I don't want more damage to the walls inside!

New (front) windows today!

Also prepared the garden & sown the lawn at the weekend. I am told all this water is good for it...

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Don't have any recommendations for that but in the meanwhile I'd be off to Screwfix or Toolstation and be buying a roll of flashing tape and sealing it up as best you can for now.

Thanks - sadly I think the way that the skylight is fitted, tape won't fix it.

I'm looking at a tarp over the top until someone fixes it properly, just hoping that won't take too long!

Estate agent bants

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Are there any forum-recommended surveyors for North-West London?I tried the search but most of the results seem quite old. Thanks so much in advance!

I haven't used this guy for housebuying but I've used him for other stuff and he's been good. http://www.northlondonsurveyor.co.uk/

Thanks so much for the recommendation! Should I get a full building survey for a first-floor Victorian conversion (with loft access), even if I don't get access to the ground floor flat? Any help is appreciated, clueless first-time buyer here...

New windows have been installed!

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Any help is appreciated, clueless first-time buyer here..

Leasehold or share of freehold? Who’s the freeholder?

Anyone had a household moth problem before? How did you deal with it?

We have a natural fibre carpet in the bedroom and it turns out that the previous owners must have had moths and that there was larva in the carpet. So they've been flourishing the last few weeks as it got warmer, and we've been battling it with frequent cleaning and cedar balls, laundering bed sheets frequently, sealing up clothes in vacuum storage bags, etc.

But as we don't like the carpets so much I'm thinking of removing the carpets altogether to destroy all of the larva that remains.

Sound like enough?

share of freehold. The other half of freehold owned by the party living in the groundfloor flat.

I'm no expert, but we had a lot of these in our student flat (ahem, because we never cleaned it...).

Eventually they got too annoying and we started applying pressure on the population by doing a big clean then hoovering everything regularly etc. We saw a difference - I'd have thought your measures will yield a difference if kept up.

Likely that once you pay to get him there and do his survery, a full building one (or at least, what he can see) won't be that much more than just the flat.

I'd have thought you definitely want to get him into the roof - in our old share of freehold, the roof was the first floor flat's problem, the drains were ours (ground floor).

Check out the I hate thread

The nuclear option of plenty of mothballs got rid of ours.

I used these. They're quite hardcore (and poisonous to cats it seems if you have one) but really did the job compared to the more consumer aimed products.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Clothes-Moth-Killer-Smoke-Bombs/dp/B0127Q885S

Oh those smoke bombs look fun.

Ordered.

Are you leasehold, share of freehold, whole building freehold?

Have you seen the lease yet? I'm in a first floor Victorian conversion and I'm only responsible for anything from the bottom of the first floor up.

Can you get access to the back of the house without going through the downstairs or will you need access anyway?

Chances are an additional inspection of at least the ground floor exterior isn't going to be that much more than what you'll be paying anyway by the time someone has come out.

Thanks again for the reply. It's share of freehold. There is no way to get to the back of the house without going through the downstairs. I haven't seen the lease yet but will ask the agents to find out on my behalf. Yes, the surveyors I have spoken to on the phone so far all seem to suggest that full building survey would not add much to homebuyer survey. I thought they would all recommend the more expensive service anyway.

We had the same problem. Now we have a cat that loves nothing more than to chase insects down and eat them. Rarely see them anymore.

Needs to be the right kind of cat though.. Our other cat shows no interest in them, only pigeons and song birds.

Is it better to have ‘local’ surveyor do the the homebuyer survey? Just had some quotes through ranging from £290 to £420.

Is anyone moving imminently? We have quite a few packing boxes and a few boxes full of packing paper.

I think the removals company will come and pick them up, but if anyone is moving themselves this could be useful.