Owning your own home

Just say to your current lawyer you only can afford £80 or whatever he'll probably do it for you

Will try, thanks

If the buyer already owns a property then they would be liable to highest stamp duty tax due to the workshop costing more than 40K. Higher bracket is 3% on entire value. There are other variables with stamp duty though that would need checking out.

I realise I didn't post an update on my RTM claim from an aggressive managing agent.

We finally achieved our right to manage our block in May this year, we've been self managing with Canonbury as our agent ever since. It is BRILLIANT. Our payments have gone down from £220 a month to £140 a month and the service is twenty times as good.

They're now trying to charge us £11k in legals for the privilge - for which they'll get absolutely destroyed at Tribunal - but that's a small thing to have to deal with in exchange for self management.

I'm now a bit of an expert in RTM. If anyone has any questions or they're thinking abotu buying a place with a crap managing agent, and they want to know what it feels like to go through this, give us a PM. You do have rights even if you are in a leasehold property.

Yes, that's probably the way we'll go but was just wondering if there were other options that we were missing.

We have two of the double fronted ones bolted together. Takes up a lot of space, but the bedroom is for bed, not floor routines.

Er

A mate noticed some pretty odd fees on his, like a huge rise in insurance.

Do you have any good links to initial reading that I could fwd?

Cheers.

I’m thinking about erecting a huge shed for all my bikes and bike paraphernalia and other tools to free up space in the house. I want it to be substantial - basically double glazed and air tight - don’t want leaks or insects taking over. I guess more of a ‘summer house’ man cave.

Anyone done this? Do such things require any special permission? Something like this is ideal looking and I think I fall within the criteria on the page regarding not needing planning. How much would I be looking at to get something like this done?

http://www.gardenaffairs.co.uk/our-services/planning-process

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Insurance CAN rise for good reasons (i.e. they need to cover for flood risks that weren't there before, or they're upping the fire coverage post Grenfell) but it's also one of the classic scams. Freeholders can't officially make money from leaseholders so they have to scam it out of us - one of the ways is that they get up to 50% 'finders fee' on the insurance contact, where they charge leaseholders 100% of the cost, then split that cost 50/50 with the insurance company. It is horseshit but it's totally legal.

The first thing I'd do is search for the freeholder of the property to see if they're aggressive or unethical. You can view all previous tribunal decisions involving a freeholder here (https://decisions.lease-advice.org/) - if they're hounding people through the courts for nothing, that's a bad sign.

From there your guy can read up here (https://www.servicechargedisputeguide.info/the-building-insurance-component-of-my-service-charge-has-increased-by-60-and-my-housing-association-landlord-will-not-let-me-see-the-policy-is-this-legal/) and see if this fits with the way in which that freeholder works. I.e. is it a known issue, is it a known scam, is there an obvious response or is this a unique situation? The more case law you can accrue on it, the more confidence you can have that you'll win. The more unique the situation, the more likely it is that your freeholder can hire expensive lawyers to drive his view through the courts.

If it's something with an obvious redress from your reading, it'd be good to talk to Lease next - they'll give you a 15 minute advice slot with a lawyer who can advise your guy. It's free - link here (https://clients.lease-advice.org/Appointment/Appointment?isFireSafety=False). They'll give you practical advice about whether or not it's a) worth challenging or b) likely to be a success.

If they think your pal has a case, the next step is to apply to Tribunal for a determination as to whether this is payable or not. If the freeholder is aggressive, it'd be good to get some legal advice at that point too.

As you can see this is all quite a faff. Most freeholders rely on the fact that leaseholders will be absent or happy to pay for a quiet life. If your freeholder is aggressive or unethical, it's worth learning about this stuff. If it's an extra hundred quid or year or so, probably not a good use of your time. Happy to provide more detailed advice if your pal has concerns.

I bought a log cabin from Garden affairs about 3 years ago, it’s 6.5m x 3.5m, so a decent size. Have had no issues with it at all, and they were really helpful. Think I paid about 7k all in for it.

A mate of mine built one of these as an office in his garden in St Alban's, ten years ago now... It was peanuts, just over £10k IIRC...

We're waiting for a quote on a garage, ballpark was around AU$20k... Seems like a lot to me but we're gonna go for it, I need to move my boxes and bikes somewhere... And I want a pillar drill...

Looks like we could be mortgage free in the next twelve months so I'm gonna just get a loan to cover the improvements I wanna make and be done with it... Veranda, new bathroom and kitchen, solar setup, garage... Bring it...

I'm in the process of building one now. 3m x 3m, so not very big. Going to end up costing about 3k

Looks like we could be mortgage free in the next twelve months

Didn't you just buy it last week!!?

One last one - noticed a good piece in the times on your pal's exact issue. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/money/fury-over-freeholder-and-agents-secret-insurance-commissions-0mbznt7kt

Yeah, we used this and came out the other end just over a year ago. We since remortgaged and stayed with them and they were great when it came to get permission to let (we moved abroad).

It was great for us as my folks * would have leant us the deposit, but getting them to put it into an account meant they couldn't beat us over the head with it every time we bought something or went on holiday while we paid it back.

It did mean my dad casually asking every few months if we'd paid the mortgage as the money gets tied up longer if you miss a payment. Even though I've never missed a rent payment in my life!

* Other parents behaviour may be different.

Great family house with plenty of room for stuffed teddies.

That was partly the reason for us. The deposit issue

I didn’t know your able to remortgage so soon. Any issues/fees in doing so?

Sorry, maybe it wasn't clear - we got to the end of the springboard mortgage, (which was 3 years), and then remortgaged last April. We stuck with Barclays/Woolwich as I had just gone freelance and it would have been hard to do all the income assessments.

Turned out great though as when we decided to move out here, they were really good with permission to let - they didn't charge a dime or change our rates.

Sorry only just seen this! I got some off gumtree!

Ahh makes sense now. I was sure it was fixed for three years.

Good to know anyways. Thanks

Anyone got any made to measure blinds recommendations? or know someone with skills I cannot describe who could fix a broken blind.

While i was away over the weekend our blind came off the roof, theres mounts still in the roof so nothing came undone directly, but the 'headrail' of the blind came unhooked and crashing to the floor and the steel headrail is severely bent by the process.

We contacted the company who supplied fitted them (via our seller who gave us the details) - theyre less than 3 years old and they have seemingly no interest in talking to us, its a huge 3m x 1.5m blind - which i cant think is going to be cheap to replace, but I have no clue where to start getting it fixed if the supplier wont even try

These are good
https://www.blinds-2go.co.uk/

And then your tradesman of choice.
Probably dulwich handyman?

I've used these a few times too, I had an issue on one a couple years down the line they sorted me out spares for free.