Owning your own home

I paid £200 for three extra sockets in my kitchen (including the chasing but not making good). Seemed about standard from my quotes.

Kitchen coming along nicely, worktop being measured on Saturday then hopefully in by the end of next week. Plumbing second fix still needs to be done and painting finished.

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Literally just had a sparky leave after going through what I will need, thanks for the reference...

Light at the end of the tunnel!

Yeah getting there! Worktop going on will be a big moment

Corr that’s a decent fridge freezer

It's basically another room. Albeit a cold one.

It's fucking mega.

Got a 'flex drawer'.

No, me neither.

Can't truly flex, without a flex draw

Weird flex, but it checks out

The flex drawer is great, I have one and mostly use it for booze.

Does anyone have any experience of house buying for a place that has Japanese knotweed (from adjoining network rail)?

My bank will lend on it subject to work being started and paid for upfront but that would mean not touching a significant bit of the garden/yard for five years.

Does this way madness lie?

The rest of the property needs a fair bit of work, so garden could be a after thought whilst I get the other things done...

Yeah, my place has knotweed, stressed it a lot until I realised it’s all bullshit.

it can be beaten back, just takes patience, graft and some pretty unpleasant chemicals in the form of glyphosate which i'm not sure is even legal anymore. probably best to at least get it off your property - it looks like ass and nothing else will grow so long as it's there.

you and G fucking off from HH, chris?

love that + mega fridge freezer. look forward to seeing it complete

There was a George Clarke episode of Ugly House - where the owners did a full bit of work on Japanese Knotweed

I loved the design, interior choices not so much

Thanks all, and @greenhell nope - bringing the father in law to London which means bigger home and potentially selling the penthouse abode - only places we can afford are ones with problems...

Yeah that was a bit of a disappointment! The original house was just a mess. Liked the brutalist concrete though but then I live in a massive concrete tower

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We had it in the flat we just sold. It depends how close to the property it is as to how much it will put off lenders/buyers. A treatment/management plan is technically all you need.

The chemical treatment doesn't actually kill it, it just suppresses it. If you disturb the roots, it will spring back into life again.

The treatment is pretty effective though, ours disappeared and never came back and the treatment came with a 10 year guarantee. You can get rid of it totally, but they have to dig a big fuck off hole to make sure they get every last bit of it. If it is coming in from adjoining land, that's probably impossible.

Even according to the guy who did ours (CYB Environmental - highly recommended), there are far worse plants for structural damage (some climbing roses, for example) but JKW was jumped on by the lenders at the time of the 2008 crash as an easy reason not to lend. Unless it's already coming up through the brickwork, there is pretty much zero chance of it giving you physical grief if there is a management plan in place.

For me personally, I wouldn't go near it, just for the amount of stress it causes at remortgage and sell time. We probably lost half of our interested buyers when they heard about it. First offer we accepted was over asking but they pulled out when their (fucking moron) mortgage advisor told them banks wouldn't lend. Still sold for asking price eventually, but fucked if I'm putting myself through that again.

only places we can afford are ones with problems...

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how normal is it that your conveyancer has to report to your lender? we've been informed today that there is a 400+VAT extra charge now applicable because they have to report information back to the lender

unpleasant chemicals in the form of glyphosate which i'm not sure is even legal anymore

*laughs in Bayer*

Ours was going to have to do something with our lender due to a potential flood risk issue that never appeared. No discussion of extra costs if they had have done tho

That should have been in your breakdown of costs to start with - unless things have changed over time. Ours was £250 from what I remember but can dig it out if it helps

@stevo_com

thanks, so reporting to lender is quite normal i guess then?