Owning your own home

Also looking for damp fixing people in North London. Have some damp marks on a chimney breast and the area under a window that I thought I'd fixed with liberal amounts of mastic has become damp again after the recent heavy rain. Cheers

I should have asked what the jokers were going to do to fix it too.

yeah i'm gonna go back to square one on this. it's not like the house is falling down as a result and it's more annoying to look at than anything else.

Live Love Learn.

Guess something blew and dumped a load of water over the sensitive bits of your boiler?

Talk to me about nest.

Just been down this rabbit warren.

Nest won’t talk to your rads so you can’t get room specific control if you need it. Apparently it used to have this feature in ‘works with nest’ stuff but they sacked it off.

Went for Tado and their rad thermostats but our place needs room control and water control, yours might not.

Depending on the make of your boiler there might be a specific product that will achieve more efficiency than a third party controller. Opentherm maybe? I didn’t spend much time on it as we are limited to a specific make.

Good luck...Google the postcode and ‘subsidence’ ;)

@T4NY4

Congrats, what a beautiful house!

5 beds huh...(starts planning summer holiday)

Cheers!
It'll be great once we get a few of the main issues resolved. Right now, with a howling gale and rain not so much! Although it is quite spectacular.
Big waves coming over the sea wall already and it's still 2 hrs until high tide...

@dubkev @Fox @fussballclub cheers!

@inchpincher get your butts over here pronto!

@Howard is that just general good advice or is W5 known for being particularly fragile underfoot?

There are some areas in W5 that are prone. The main one I know of is the area to the west of the Avenue bordering Drayton Green (actually w13 but there we go). South Ealing I’m not familiar with but Ealing does have issues so have a poke around.

Top man, thank you, will ensure it's on the surveyors list

They will look for signs of it by default but they won’t do things like poke about online for you.

Another tip (for anyone) is to try to get quotes for buildings insurance online. Just answer everything with what you know and assume and see what comes back. If you can’t get a quote or it’s very expensive its possibly evidence of a large claim in the recent past.

Accuracy not great on Geobear, but suggests we're not in a danger zone

Critical illness insurance on a mortgage? Good idea? (Well, yes, I guess it goes without saying that it's a good idea, if money were no object). Seems very spenny for the amount of cover provided? Don't think I'm being too tight here, but maybe!

It's usually a requirement from the mortgage company.

Mine is ~£80/month (Mrs GB's a bit more than that) and means the remaining mortgage is completely paid off should either of us get seriously ill.

Not on ours, apparently, but 'recommended'. I get why you might want it in place, but it seems eye wateringly expensive compared to other forms of insurance (ours is v similar to yours).

I guess I'll shop around and suck up whatever a reasonable cost seems to be.

£80 * 20 years * 12 months = £19,200

Also that £80 costs a lot less in the last year than it does in the first year due to inflation.

This is for a ~£250k (original principal) mortgage. Decreasing sum payout (designed to match the outstanding mortgage balance) assuming steady repayments.

Payouts will be skewed to the later years of the mortgage term as critical illness likelihood increases with age.

So not having it means I could use the money to pay off my mortgage about a year early. Two years early if both I and Mrs GB don't have it. Or we can have it as a fallback should either of us get something life-changing (odds aren't great TBH) that could leave the other person in a serious financial hole. For risk-averse me it's a no brainer.

My partner and I pay £22/month/each for a £50k pay-out should either of us become critically ill and full mortgage pay-out in the event of death.
(with Zurich)

@Greenbank in very similar circumstances, so that's v helpful, thank you!

@quinc thanks, that's also v helpful. We were considering a small payout sum and effectively accepting a degree of risk.

Just been looking at critical illness insurance as well. Ended up getting income protection insurance as it covers a wider range of circumstances for quite a lot less money.

Any recommendations for a bathroom fitter in East London?
Weighing up plans/cost/effort.

You can also see if your employer has something in place. For us we decided to cover ourselves by topping up to a full salary for 3 years I think. If one dies then the mortgage gets paid off and there is something from our employers too.

If you have children you might want to consider something more substantial

Just exchanged! Completing on the 15th :)

woop!

Congrats!