Owning your own home

other than north London being a fucking hell hole?

Stratford counts as east London.

Right by the Olympic Park, which is nice.

John Lewis and Waitrose down the road in Westfield, for all of your golf thread related requirements.

Depreciation on new builds?
Eurostar doesn't stop at Stratford?

And yes, that's not North London, it's East London which is the best London.

Seems like an aweful lot of money for what it is...that said there is always a new build premium.

I live just by Wanstead flats and cycle through Chobham Manor pretty much every day. As you would expect from a new build area it's a bit soulless, (my wife's dad spent 15 years working all around Europe and it kind of reminds me of the places his work would put him up in that were just full of expats). There's bars, restaurants, sourdough bakery etc and it always seems pretty quiet, apart from on West Ham home matches. One thing that would bother me is concerts at the London stadium, might not be something that bothers you though?

HA HA North London. You joker.

Stratford, especially the Olympic park area, is more and more looking like a nice place to live, it has a clean European city vibe especially in the summer time.

Walking distance form Hackney wick, Victoria park actually and London Fields which I am sure you know are the only places worth going in London.

I would thoroughly recommend one of those builds and the area.

new build house, should be efficient and properly wired / arranged for modern living

Not neccessarily there is a lot of stuff that gets messed up in the new build process a lot can go un noticed, even if there is a snagging provision in your contract.

car port thing to put e cargo bike and camper van, get straight to the fucking golf thread

This may be a BIG con, often to get planning a lot of developers will do a deal with the planning authority meaning that if you live in their shiny new development you cannot apply for a residents parking permit. So if down the line you need to add another car to your fleet of vehicles and cannot get it in the car port you're shafted and have to pay for private parking. Also can effect the resale value if you put off a number of potential buyers who are adamant that they want 2 cars and can't have it.

terrace/s

A potential money pit for damp issues; if the terrace is poorly designed or not contructed by someone who knows what they are doing or even is constructed by someone who knows what they were doing but is hungover on the day they do the waterproofing!

Most new build properties are fine but having had to put right some truly shocking workmanship on new build properties I'm always a bit sceptical about them. The biggest problem is that the developers tend to employ their own building inspectors, so if the people putting up the building are paying the inspectors directly things can get swept under the rug. I would imagine that after phase II of the grenfell enquiry comes out this will no longer be allowed but any changes will take a while to come through.

The floorplans seem to me to bear no resemblance to the description. The first and second floor plans appear to be identical, and the fourth floor plan doesn't seem to be there at all.

We're on our second new build place (moved in March).

There are plenty of positives to a new build; walls are straight, things are to code, everything's fresh / new, if you're buying off plan you can customise (a bit). Depending on the builder / time of year / area, there's also plenty of incentives & discounts to go for. For our current place we got nearly 6% off of list price as well as stamp duty paid which helped give us a nice lump of capital to buy furniture, clear moving debts etc.

There are definitely negatives though. We've got with one premium / small development builder (this time) and one more mass market builder and both have had quality, design and after sales support issues...

In our flat in Hither Green, the sales person was useless and lost our options form. He filled a new one in with guesses and the kitchen and main bathroom had to be ripped apart and refitted. There were also plumbing issues with poor quality / cheap parts. The new house had poorly installed bathrooms (apparently they fired their bathroom fitter after he did our house) which resulted in mould under the flooring, tiling having to be re-done and shower screens leaking. This was all resolved but not before having to email the CEO.

Overall though, both were definitely a net positive; we love the current house.
Royston isn't quite Stratford for London connections but there's some nice 4 beds still available...