Owning your own home

Everything in the house buying/selling process feels like it could go a hell of alot smoother with an overhaul of how comms are done.

We got notified last Weds by mortgage broker that lender has instructed survey and they would be reaching out to estate agent that day. Only today do we find out that that communication didn't make it, lender says surveys says they couldn't get through. Estate agent says she never got left a message. So thats just a week lost into the void.

Some of the essential gears in the process are basically hobbyists.

I'm looking at you, surveyors.

It's just a matter of wait and see at the moment, which is kind of excruciating. There's 2 other flats in the block for sale so hopefully between the 3 of us we can keep on the managing agent to get it done. What doesn't help is the EA that came over a few days ago said it'll probably be at least 3 months to get the EWS1 survey done from when it gets booked in, and we're not even close to having it booked in.

The mental gymnastics required to look at this whole process and decide 'yeah, this is fine' is astounding.

My thoughts exactly.

Pressure from my buyers who understandably want to be in without a huge wait, they're renting.

The survey on my house took a month from booking to going ahead. I made sure I spoke with my mortgage provider on the new propery and was ensured that because the property is vacant arranging a survey won't be an issue. Last week I heard the earliest they can do is the middle of next month.

I feel a lot of this shit could be resolved with a couple of good phone calls. The mind boggles.

Oh also with the possibility of a second lockdown I'm starting to shit myself about this whole house buying / selling process.

90% of EWS1 surveys are returning failing results.

Well, shit. I don't know what will happen if ours fails.

Re: EWS1 survey, if you wanted to organise it yourself (between you and the others trying to sell), is that a possibility? Is it prohibitively expensive?

I want a hoist so bad...

Anecdotally if you want to try and get it done soon you're looking at a fee of £10k +. Also I'm not sure if an individual can do it as it's for the building as a whole and the surveyor will need access to internal areas to check seals and materials.

Balls. It all sounds like a nightmare. My hope would be that there is an initial amount of pain until an amount of common sense or logic is applied where at least the responsibility trickles down into more generalist surveys and indemnity policies are used.

If I could find a decent quality tabletop one I'd go for it... I'd just be amusing myself making custom bolts most of the time...

It's really just an excuse to buy a pair of overalls... 🙃

Please stop. Looking forward to finally having a garage if everything goes ahead with 'my' house.

After a month of being in my new place I discovered it had lighting under the cabinets in the kitchen which was a pleasant surprise as I'd been planning to fit some.

Looking at fitting a deep worksurface in the kitchen (maybe 800mm). How's this work in terms of cupboards, can you get deeper cupboards or do you end up with a void at the back (thinking it could be an ideal place to store the ironing board and step ladder if you can add a door)?

What will happen if you have cladding is you will receive a B2. This is bad. The genie is out of the bottle. You will not get a mortgage at all until all the remediation work is complete and that will be long and expensive.

My advice is do not push for an EWS1 until the Govt releases updated guidance on which buildings fall in and out of scope. If you're able to work with the lender/valuer to provide as much information as is possible right now without the EWS1. This would be things like; building designs, material specs, latest FRA, etc..

Only the building owner or freeholder (they might not be the same) can apply for an EWS1. If you pay for it yourself it's totally worthless.

I didn't know that. Luckily, it does not seem to be an issue with mine.

Indeed. It was originally intended to be for buildings over 18m only, but it's ultimately at the discretion of the lender.

I'm on the RTM board of our building, which has just had a B2 EWS1 so in effect no one can sell or remortgage until it's resolved. Timescales for that are, realistically, 12 months even on a fairly hopeful view. It's all an absolute shit show, and the government are stuck because they have no real process to fix the problem but nor can they just say "everyone ignore the risks and let's pretend Grenfell never happened"

BTW it's not only cladding that's the problem; our building has polystyrene insulation under render on two walls and that's what's knackered us

can you get deeper cupboards or do you end up with a void at the back

We got cabinets from Howdens. They had different depth wall cabinets available - not sure about floor standing cabinets though.

I suspect you'd end up with a void if they're used as standard, as they'd also have to start making deeper drawers, shelves, storage systems etc to fit them. However, it might not be a big customisation job for a fitter to make one of the cupboards deeper.

Wait until the scandal of missing cavities comes out. It's going to be a lot of buildings.

The whole concept of fire compartmentalisation is going to unravel. We're moving quickly towards fire suppression (sprinklers/misters) per dwelling IMO.

Ask the 'designer'. Our guy was tremendously helpful despite me thinking I knew exactly what I wanted.

Fark.

Things are unraveling on our purchase a bit.
Original asking price was £250k. Ended up offering £10k over in order to get it, as there was another offer.

It ended up with us being accepted, based on us being the most likely to proceed, plus that the vendor apparently didn't want it to continue as a bidding war and had been happy to just get the asking price.

Fast forward several weeks and the survey flagged a load of fairly significant works, mainly damp related - damp on all floors, lack of DPC, leaking roof, render on whole gable wall (3 storeys) needing replaced, chimney leaking, the list goes on.

We had a builder in who quoted ~£28k for fixing the immediately necessary bits, and we estimate there's another £15-20+k to get the house properly sorted on top of that.

We went in low, taking £32k off our offer.

EA has come back saying that vendor will only drop £5k and is prepared to go back on the market or to the other party that originally offered.

We were expecting a level of negotiation, but only dropping £5k (which is then still £5k over what she had originally be 'happy with') seems like a total piss take.

Grrrrrrr. Time for some hard ball on our part I think.

Was it visually apparent that the place was a bit...fucked? Like was is obviously neglected / in disrepair?

missing cavities

missing cavity barriers?
Retrofitting sprinklers has apparently got a lot cheaper too, but that's only from media, I don't know anyone who's done it.
The things is compartmentalisation works, on the whole. There are approx 2 high-rise fires a day (in the UK) that don't result in any deaths and you don't hear about and often even in the same block you're unaware of it. The conventional wisdom was that mass exodus carried a higher likelihood of injury and obstructing the fire service, so better to stay put and stay calm. There was also the thinking that reliance on sprinkler systems was risky because as an 'active' measure they could fail to function, so the fire prevention had to be 'built-in'.

All of that orthodoxy has now gone. No-one will stay put, for good reason.