Owning your own home

No but if it's plastic and passes the testing replace it anyway before it burns your house down.

(See Amendment No. 3 to BS 7671 - Regulation 421.1.201 - which says any new unit should be made with steel or another non-combustible material).

Late to the worktop chat, but inheriting a wooden worktop has been an exercise in wabi-sabi for me.

The seller is a "property investor" and is retiring and selling off some of her houses.

You've got to work in the first place to be able to retire.

Any recommendations for good alu window fabricators and installers in SE? I think @amey mentioned something recently, any leads appreciated. Also does anyone know of current or upcoming deals for improving old houses energy efficiency?

For triple glazed, thermally broken units I'd look outside of London/the UK. Ireland has some good manufacturers of energy-efficient options: U-values of 0.5W/m²K (Centre pane = ~0.3W/m²K). We used munster joinery as they had the cheapest quote: £14.5k for the glazing and doors of two 3 bed houses. People pay way too much in London!

She suggested the smarter move would be to sell now and rent, and wait to see what the market does.

People have been saying this for a long time.

I can remember having discussions like this with younger colleagues almost twenty years ago; “We’re thinking of holding off buying now as prices are unsustainable and are sure to drop, and you don’t want to buy at the top of the market.”

I still think prices are unsustainable but a recorrection will be devastating for a significant part of the population.

EWS! update: Second valuation of £0 - this time from Barclays, previously from Halifax. FML

The most over valued property in the world + covid + brexit... it's hard to see the optimistic view unless wealthy people keep their cash in the UK and double down on landlording? Rent reductions/arrears makes that feel unlikely?

Want me to see if my broker would be willing to take a look? He's apparently directly in touch with the underwriters at quite a few lenders so has been able (in the past, and not for me) to get past the initial "computer says no" responses.

They are not a FOC broker, btw.

It's nothing a broker can navigate unfortunately. It's a much bigger mess than my individual story.

Thanks for the offer though.

Sorry to hear this, was going to offer to put you in contact with my mortgage guy but can see your reply to Stevo.

Hope this isn't impacting your (mental) health too much, I can't imagine its not, but hope the impact isn't too big and you've got folks to support you.

I'm currently selling my place and am lucky enough to have an EWS1 form (although I'm still not counting on anything until contracts are signed). When my buyer's mortgage surveyor was here though, I asked him about it and he said that in his experience Santander were the most lenient and in some cases weren't requesting the EWS1 form. Maybe worth giving them a try?

Received an offer on our house last week; found a nice house on the weekend; went to put an offer in this morning; our buyers withdrew their offer. Hate all this process.

Our first buyers withdrew 2 days after we accepted theirs. Even after writing a full page love note about how much they wanted the place. Got the phonecall while leaving our viewing of a place we were just about to offer on.

Got another offer a week or so later and we were still able to offer on the place we wanted. All still going through (touch wood).

Fingers crossed we will be able to do the same - we loved the place we'd seen, and apparently so far it's only had low offers. Hopefully we'll get some more interest in our place, although we're pretty over making it look like a show home.

My buyer withdrew the week of completion.

On the upside though we found another buyer who actually offered more and the delay meant that we got the stamp duty holiday so it all worked out in the end.

although we're pretty over making it look like a show home.

Fuck yes. While it was nice to walk back into a tidy flat, I'm glad to have access to my shed again after storing/hiding most of our crap.

Somewhat over a year ago I put a load of stuff in MIL's garage so the flat would be nice and tidy for viewings. Given it's been there a year I'm starting to question whether I actually need most of it back.

Don't. Most of the "important stuff" that ended up in the shed would have gone to the tip if it were just me.

Natural Welsh slate.

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Exactly what I'm dealing with now. How much do I keep hold of given the new place isn't going to have a garage. Figuring I'll move it all and have sort out once the new place is renovated...

Beautiful. Great admiration for how you're going about the renovations.

Did this resolve itself in the end?

There's lovely.

Finally have a survey date booked but still no word from our mortgage application that was submitted September 8th, small steps I guess.