Owning your own home

Cheers and @Greenbank
They do look pretty expensive but we're planning on being at the property long term so a bit more palatable and I do like the idea of only one key. I've contacted them for a survey.

Negative interest rates will have no impact on consumer lending. All contacts have a floor in them so even if interest rates were -10% your bank wouldn't be sending your a cheque every month.

Consumers need to fear interest rate rises.

feels like we have another decade of secular stagnation in us, sadly

Interest rates have to go up in the medium-long term because the fiscal gap is very unlikely to be filled by productivity, which has been in decline since the 80s

Some (many?/most?) mortgages can be moved to another property within the fixed period, so unless you're moving to another country or getting out of ownership completely you still have some freedom to move.

Cheers, I've contacted him and he should be coming tomorrow.

bet my colleague in 2013/14 that rates would go down before they went up - he called me an idiot, but then I wasn't the one who lost and had to get a spray tan...

We'll be breaking out of our 5 year fixed nearly 3 years in if our broker can't get it ported. I've always worked with that as a cost to move in our budget (£6k). When we signed the 5 year, we didn't have a kid to make us think about moving within 5 years so I'm not going to beat myself up for not having that foresight.

I have also asked the broker to look at both porting and staying with the Halifax Vs switching and paying the early repayment fee and potentially making that back in savings on a better deal.

Will be looking at another 5 year as my anxiety doesn't let me think I'll keep my job for any length of time.

TBF it was 50/50

Of course they do - but they charge you a hefty whack for the privilege

Unless you mean porting - it’s a ball ache though and they have you by the balls.

Too many balls

Cheers all, lots of interesting perspectives.
We are only a year into our current house and although we see a lot of our friends moving out of London we think they are SADO's for doing so and it's not something we are considering anytime soon. There is slim possibility of a child within the next two years which makes a 5 year lock in feel about the right time to reassess our life decisions and to tally up the friends still in the smoke.

I thought the consensus among economists at the moment is that the only way is down given the recession and mass unemployment that's coming? Surely raising them would slow growth which is the last thing the Bank of England would want to do?

There has been a short term rise fueled by rising petrol prices (after they dropped during lockdown), food costs increasing and frantic PPE buying but there's currently speculation that the BoE might take us into negative territory...

Any recommendations for a gas boiler engineer in North London? I'd normally use FullFlame but he's booked up for a few weeks.

Rokas

https://rokas.london/contact/#

Used him twice, used by others on here... everyone very happy with him

That is right yes. But in the medium to long term they will need to rise. The UK (and particularly because if its economic makeup) will need to work out how it moves out of a debt fuelled, cheap credit economy. The UK has so little resistance to further shock now, either centrally or distributed thorough its citizens.

There's currently no benefit for anyone to have savings and operate their lives with any level of prudence. And the govt will need people to do this in the long-term so that the burden on state is less severe than our current trajectory dictates.

I think taking a 2/3/5 year fixed is all the same really and would expect this to change in the following decade and for the 40-50 years after.

This was the basis of my 'under what circumstances would they go up' comment

But as Andy says you can find yourself excluded from the best deals because of LTV changes due to price drops and whatnot.

Louie (A Tec Plumbing) has been good in the past.
http://www.a-tecplumbingandheating.com/

Cheers, Rokas should be coming tomorrow but I've got Louie bookmarked as well.

Could see the boiler being a bit of an arse to fix. It's a new install and I tested it worked before moving in but now seems to be throwing up errors.

I realise it's hard to compare like for like but what are people paying for Service Charges? I live in a 3 storey victorian conversion with x4 flats and it's approximately £1400 a year.

I've requested a break down from the managing agent but as far as I'm aware this doesn't include a sinking fund.

I think the other leaseholders and I would be eligible to apply for the RTM but it doesn't seem worth the trouble unless there's a significant saving to be made.

RTM isn't a fix-all. If you're worried about a sinking fund, you can just ask your managing agent to make a provision for one. If they agree to raise it with the other leaseholders and are generally responsive, I'd say they're one of the good ones and you're probably right not to look at RTM.

I live in a 24 flat block in Leyton and I pay £150 pcm with around £60k in the sinking fund. Prior to RTM I was paying £240 pcm.

Thanks for the reply.

I'm not concerned about the sinking fund / lack of, just trying to work out if what we're paying is ballpark 'normal' (I think it probably is).

They are responsive and have been offering good service which is a nice change after having previously had an uncontactable, disorganised bunch. I'm happy enough with them but one of the other leaseholders was grumbling about paying too much and it got me thinking.

£75/month for a 3-bed flat in an Edwardian house conversion (3 flats). Total income from the 3 flats is ~£300 a month. The main outlay is buildings insurance (~£1500 from memory) and then the rest trickles in to a sinking fund. Currently near empty as we had some repointing work done, and we've got a bit more to do next year.

Other works are some pollarding of trees with TPOs, but these only get done every 3-4 years and the divvying up is a bit more complicated (we all pay for the two trees in the shared part of the front garden, and everyone pays individually for the trees in their own private garden areas [luckily we have none]).

We're a share of freehold so we do it all ourselves, so no management company or fees. Reminds me, I should ask downstairs for the latest set of accounts.

This was the incident that persuaded me we needed better security. Behold, our (attempted) burglar. I saw him on the camera whilst at the gym, set off the alarm manually, and he ran off. Security camera images were used to nick him, and he's now doing stir.

1 Attachment

• 1550860561171.mp4

Fucking hell. Could've warned us to turn the volume down!

You should probably get some curtains

We each pay a fixed percentage of actual incurred itemised expenses in a similar building, and were even before we took over management. A lot less than that though in a normal period, although sometimes there are big expenses.

Managing is a constant headache for little reward, especially if any of the leaseholders are difficult. I’d only push that button for a very a good reason.