Owning your own home

What a ball ache

.. all flats?? We’re shorter than most houses.

Yes for mortgage finance reasons. Not necessary to be on title deeds - will that make a difference?

I think the mortgage market may have changed as I was told there is some where it didn’t affect ftb incentives.

The only way round is declaring it as a home then renting but you’ll need to inform the mortgage company and very unlikely they would like that. I know on my current mortgage that was what was hinted.

Obvs if they buy something now they won’t be affected by stamp duty but still

all flats

With cladding presumably.

Bollocks. This is probably going to bugger up my flat sale too. Arse arse arse.

Flat is on the ground floor but they (lender) are going to shit the bed when they see the top floor, ask for an EWS form, and nobody at the freeholder is going to sign it.

https://goo.gl/maps/w3oTXTW62SP2rERr7

Fucking flats!

1 Attachment

• Inside Housing - Comment - The EWS process has brought paralysis to the housing market. It is the re.pdf

One of my mates had the cladding on their block inspected and results were "inconclusive". They now have two fire wardens in the block 24/7 whilst the next step is considered.

They were vaguely thinking about selling their flat but I imagine they're screwed now.

Check to bottom two answers here https://www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/blog/stamp-duty-for-first-time-buyers-your-questions-answered

Cheers. I pushed back against it so should have a week in between (assuming we exchange of course).

If they're on the deeds you'd be looking at second property stamp duty which is an additional 3%.

However, if they're not on the deeds then some of the mortgage companies will get antsy and you may need to be looking at guarantor mortgages instead and getting one of those as buy to let may be awkward.

To be honest, my gut feeling is that the whole thing doesn't really seem that worth it unless there is an amazing yield.

A buy to let that the buyer can't afford without assistance in what is promising to be a turbulent economic period seems not a great idea.

Can anyone recommend a good but affordable company for windows? Could be wood or aluminium.

I'm about to embark on a stupidly big building project with a stupidly small budget. (3,5 years after I bought the 'site' which took 1,5 year to buy ... I haven't started building yet and I'm already fed up with it.)

There's a lot of windows in the plans.

EWS1 update:
Peabody who are the leaseholder of our flat have provided a letter to me (the vendor), the broker and the valuer which basically says; This flat doesn't need an EWS1 form and one will not be provided.

To whom it may concern,

Re: Fire Safety Review of buildings under 18m

You have requested a statement about the safety of the external wall system of address. This building is under 18m height as measured in line with the building regulations to the top floor finished floor level.

Recent advice from The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), for buildings both with or without Aluminium Composite cladding applies to buildings over 18m only. All buildings will have passed building control approval at the time they were constructed and the building regulation requirements for buildings under 18m have not changed. There is no requirement to provide more confirmation on the cladding type other than is normally contained in a Fire Risk assessment. This risk assessment will highlight if we consider further investigation is required and work will be undertaken as for any other fire precaution work.
A cladding analysis report will not be provided in this case.

Regards,

Name
Head of Building Safety

I'm unconvinced this will work.

Yeah. The lender doesn’t have to lend if they don’t like what they see.

Fingers crossed it will get through though.

Thanks for sharing this stuff - I had no idea it was a thing. Selling our place to a cash buyer was hard enough without this nonsense.

Plan for the other flat is to make sure the buyer gets their lenders survey done asap so any issues come up sooner rather than later.

Our next step if this doesn't work is to get the buyer to try another lender but this is a further lengthy process and certainly not guaranteed to work. If we have to we can rent the place but the cash I have tied-up in it was supposed to fund the refurb on my new place. So, rock and hard place.

Perhaps have a look at Jeldwen. Their factor painted wood windows seem pretty good to me.

Is this the place just off Old Kent Road? It’s not much different to a terraced house, I’m surprised it’s subject to the cladding fiascos.

Yep. Small bit of cladding at top of building. It's also on one section of the rear of building.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/London+SE1+5YA/@51.488606,-0.0711332,3a,75y,198.03h,101.35t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sVaizBFs9DiwSl5E8h44Vaw!2e0!3e11!7i16384!8i8192!4m5!3m4!1s0x4876036ca25a394f:0xeaa94741ef454dba!8m2!3d51.4881343!4d-0.071556

We had something similar; the sale collapsed and we found a new buyer quickly. There is hope especially with the stamp duty holiday.

🤞

Best of luck to all with flats with cladding. I'm currently trying to remortgage my flat that has timber clad exterior walls and it's proving.......... Challenging.

I suspect that if the letter to the lender doesn't work then nothing else will work that isn't a 100% cash buyer. And the likelihood of that happening is basically zero.

It's this letter, or joining the hundreds/thousands of others in their mortgage prisons.

Oh well.

I think 600,000 potential leaseholders in morgate prision was the figure I read quoted due to the new requirements, seems mental

They’ll have to fix it though or the entire market for flats will die, and that’s the bottom of the housing market wiped out.

Also means any new build flats won’t be mortgageable either.

So plenty of people with an interest in getting it fixed.

Yeah I'm sure it'll happen, just timing is against me. And lots of others on SVR mortgages too.

What is a mortgage prisoner? Somebody who didn’t read the terms?

I think (hundreds of thousands of) people could probably be forgiven for purchasing attractive modern flats before a national tragedy forced legislation on cladding to change more or less overnight