Owning your own home

Ha! We just bought this.

Thanks for helping me not look at Eltham.

Contracts officially exchanged. Better start looking properly at moving companies 🤷🏼‍♀️

Ahhh, I'm so excited, 4 bedroom house. London exodus is real.

mortgage protection

We have a lump sum. When we bought we didn't have kids but were planning.

Our mortgage was £330, so we went for £300 as we figured the surviving spouse would be able to fund the short fall (if there was any). Plus iirc it brought the monthly payments to £27 which we thought was reasonable and at that price silly not to.

Didn't do critical illness because a few months before my OH had had a tingling in one toe (probably caused by walking to work in the wrong shoes) and went to the GP. The GP couldn't say what it was so classified it as undiagnosed, which meant they were uninsurable.

Congrats.

Do you not think it's worth having a small policy to at least cover say 5-10yrs of mortgage repayments?

Not to be invasive, but it would be a small amount of £pm and would mean that in the traumatic event of loosing a father and spouse you're not making your family also deal with the stress and disruption of selling and moving.

internal and external insolation

Oooh, I'd be careful not to make the house too insolent. :)

ha, thanks. edited

Keep them coming, I enjoy good typos.

The chimney sweep sounds like a lovely source of food for moth grubs which will mean more moths hunting for somewhere consumable to lay their eggs!

When we moved house we pulled out my wife's sheep wool slippers and they were riddled with moths/grubs. We didn't think we had a moth issue either.

Congrats! It's a great house. We never did have that walk!

I'm confused, you said you're picking up keys on Friday, but only looking at moving companies now? #eek

Obviously I don't approve of your pollution machine but love the fireplace - 60s/70s?

Oh we're in London until we leave this flat so we leave before 12 March.

We will need to catch up with you guys, you can come visit!

Had them up in the living room with fairly heavy curtains for 2 years now. No problems so far but I guess for the price you Can’t expect too much

The house was built in 1938 , always assumed the fireplace was OG but it does look 70s tbf. Also I am in rural Sweden so I am allowed fires.

Awesome cheers my dude! Yeah we’re still about a year and a bit off starting our works - currently looks like we might miss out on the RHI cut off date (but think that will be extended). Maybe I’ll have to drive by yours on my way back home one time when you’re done and take a shufti 😃

I've been asked to make an offer for a pair of garages that are in the grounds of the flat block that I live in. They're side by side, but each has their own lease - with apparently different periods left to run.

I did try to buy the left hand one before, around five years ago - the lady who owned it wanted 20k which I didn't want to pay.

I think that a single garage would add around 10k value to the flat, and a double (potentially with the dividing wall removed, although I'm assuming that that would have a raft of legal issues to deal with) would add more. I very much don't think that they are worth 40k, as they need fairly extensive maintenance work.

Is garage valuation a thing?

Ask an estate agent? Or look at flats which have sold with or without garages?

Yeah definitely a thing, lots of houses in Edinburgh have the option of a garage. I have a vague memory of it being about 35k

This is the whole filthy premise of insurance. It’s a fucking racket in my opinion. Especially for low probability, high impact scenarios.

All windows done, 11 in 3 days. Apart from my own stresses, I couldn't recommend Everest enough. So far.

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They were all fucked, but this was the worst by far.

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What does it cost to rent a garage - £50-100 / month? Put a 5% cap rate on that and you get towards a valuation of £20k.

Planning to move my radiators under the bay window, probably 3 of these in series, any potentially issues with that?

Assuming not, short curtains or Roman blinds best for stemming heat loss? Curtains get my vote, also probably loads cheaper but the committee has floated the idea of blinds.

I think we're probably going the Roman blind route, likely for the same committee reasons. Either way, I need something!

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