Owning your own home

I had good experience with Nested. I think they still do a referal where you'd get a discount on the fee

https://nested.com?refcode=Uaihdu_X2ig

I am in SE6 and sold and bought using Reeds Rains, it was unreal how good they were, worth chatting to them; ideally Eugene (he cycles).

Robinson Jackson were awful.

You can tell the EA to list it for any value, so you can go with Acorn, but ask them to list for £450k.
Rates are usually negotiable, to an extent, they will probably have a minimum level (around 1.2% in other people I knows experience)

Avoid Robinson Jackson like the plague. Valued us 60k under what we sold for, refused to entertain the notion of the house being worth any more despite every other agent being spot on (besides the jokers at KFH going 'get the custom' high). Completely ignorant of the area despite being an historically local agency, talked a lot of shit peppered with covid denialism and a bit of casual misogyny. Couldn't wait to get him out of the house. We sold through JDM blackheath (who approached us!), and we found them excellent. Lowest fees, genuinely nice agent, good office staff. Reeds Rains were our second choice, but the fees swung us – they were .2/3 % higher IIRC. Stanfords seems alright, bit pushy.

I think we paid around £2.5k in london to remove a 4m wall and insert a cranked beam to accommodate the upstairs flat's stairs, the beam was then another £1k delivered. It was cheaper than other quotes at the time. It was also part of some other works so economies of scale - however they were shit, didn't read the drawings properly so fucked up the pad stones and their "making good for decoration" was quite misaligned to my expectations.

Wish we'd paid more and got a competent builder.

i'd go for Acorn 100%. KFH were fucking awful to us last year (SE21) and acorn we got a quote from when we wanted to relist, ended up going with someone else but had neighbours/friends that had had good experiences with them and we wished we had gone with them.

I wouldn't worry about the valuations, they'll put it on for whatever you want (within reason).

Which of those valuations looks realistic (have a look at sold prices in the area and completed rightmove/Zoopla ads)? Tempting you in with a high valuation, it not selling quickly and the estate agent going "you need to drop the price" is pretty common.

If you know anyone who has bought or is buying in the area then ask them about their experiences. We went with our estate agent as they were more proactive than others at phoning round and getting people in to viewings (we'd started looking to buy slightly earlier so we'd experienced all the local ones firsthand).

That Acorn fee looks a bit high as well, nearer 1% should be achievable.

@terlg Yeeesh, yeah that doesn't sound good.

Other than the house falling down my biggest worry is the "making good" not meeting my expectations, which are frankly quite high. Thanks for the reply. Sorry to hear you had a less than ideal experience.

Cheers all. My thought before we spoke to any estate agents was that 425 would make sense. I've booked an appointment with Reeds Rains and started the Nested application to get a bit more of a feel.

Acorn were VERY keen to sell ours and kept bombarding me with emails and calls.
They seemed on the ball in terms of valuation and getting viewings but I really hate their presentation.
It looks like they haven't changed their marketing for about 20 years.
We went with Mundays in the end as we wanted an agent that understood the area and the appeal of our house and knew how to present it properly.
They're really only SE15/SE5/SE22 though

@popdown I put in what I thought was a competitive offer. Spoke to the agent this morning, they had an offer at or over 360. Someone can have it at that price

Edit for anyone interested. This has had offers over 360 and it is a 2 up 2 down (albeit a nicely done one) on an average street in Easton https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/79075989#/

Does anyone use the rent a room scheme?

*Edit googled this bit

Second, in Bristol where I live there aren't enough rooms so when my current house had to put a room on spareroom recently, we got 200 replies in the first morning. I am planning to use the scheme if I buy a 2 bed house, but the bank won't factor this income into my offer. If I get one of my current housemates to pay me 600 for the next 3 months (could say this is rent a room scheme with my landlords permission), would that let them lend me another 5x(600x12?)

Appreciate only being able to borrow 4.75x or whatever it is is there for a reason, but I could put that 5x(600x12) as cash if I needed to as part of my deposit - I just don't want to when the interest rates are so low.

Cheers

Before Christmas I removed the wall between living and dining room with my father in law (who is a builder). Cost was around £6.5k

£3.5k was his labour and materials
£1k steel frame
£1k. Custom plaster coving around the dining room (to match existing in the living room)
£450 structural engineer
£500ish for new skirting + fitting everywhere

That got us to a plastered finish. I did a lot of labour myself though - moving light switch and sockets, plaster boarding, replacing/swapping floorboards, reinstating picture rail etc

I can't obviously comment for Scotland but I'd say your quote seems reasonable.

Oh and we had a skip (£350)

You're father in law charged you for labour. Ouch

I'd expect this kind of work to be reassuringly expensive tbh.

We are London.... waiting on proper quotes for two versions of a job, one that includes removing a load bearing wall and one that doesn't. The builder said as a rough guide the cost of doing the wall will add about 6K, so that sounds in line. I'd expect London to be more expensive, but our 6K difference won't include finishing since that's in the overall job either way,

talked a lot of shit peppered with covid denialism and a bit of casual misogyny.

eewwwwww

My friend who's also put an offer in was told there were 12 offers today.

360 seems high to me but prices be a bit crazy!

The SE6 buyer experience with Reeds Rains was ok. They also did a valuation for me a few years ago and seemed good.

There seem to be quite a few small independents locally - I used John Alan on Bromley Rd for a valuation, they seemed fine, have no extensive experience with them though.

is this the thread to ask about jersey cotton bedlinen - am after a set, at the more bargain end of the scale rather than full on golf club

this is something else. Don't know what's more dramatic, the lack of colour in the house or the music choice on the tour video

Someone posted this up on twitter today. As someone else commented “I can actually taste the gak looking at those photos”

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/104968019

Check the prison bogs

The real crime is that they didn't chase the TV power cable. Tsk Tsk.

I couldn't even work out what I was looking at in most of those photos. What was the empty room with 3 steps?