Owning your own home

looks nothing wrong with it other than needs brought into this century

But that means total renovation. Agree, great potential but the amount of work required to do it is not to be underestimated and you might find you can't live in it as it is.

Yeah it amazes me how much stuff we've had in the front garden like that over the last 2 years!

Best of luck mate! Love those houses

looks nothing wrong with it other than needs brought into this century

The probability that the lean-to extension needs knocking down and rebuilding is ~100%, and I suspect anyone that spends a million quid on a house doesn’t want a kitchen in a corridor.

LOL

I used to live pretty much where you're describing (Stracey Road) and it was nice.

I do wish we could have afforded to get a bigger place in the same area.

That would look great on a roadside verge near Biggin Hill.

Biggin Hill is pristine compared to the lanes around St Mary Cray and Swanley.

I’ll never forget finding a burnt out transit, sans engine, on Star Lane completely filled with rubbish. Easier to load up the vehicle then torch it than it was to scatter the rubbish everywhere. Not that there wasn’t also rubbish scattered everywhere, because obviously there was. Wonderful road, that one.

Going out that way every day was fun. A guessing game of what would be burnt out or dumped there

Not probate. I think an elderly couple where the man has passed away and been survived by his wife, but she isn’t able to live there anymore.

Most fun would be riding through asbestos filled waste.

Permanently closed now. I once came across a still smoldering caravan burnt out there.

Surely this just means more resourceful flytipping occurs but nobody can drive down there to see it/report it?! A shame as it was a useful lane, assuming you survived the shattered glass puncture roulette, anyway.

How long do I need to leave a freshly plastered room before someone can sleep in it? Plasterer says room plastered this week will be OK for Christmas but room done next week won't, still too damp. I'm hoping he is just being extra cautious. If not, Christmas at my parents is going to involve my husband and me sleeping on the floor in the living room :(

Depends a bit on how thick the plaster is, how much ventilation the room has, how warm it is... Maybe get a humidity sensor? Once it is similar to the other rooms in the house I can't see why there would be a problem.

Before sleeping in it? I mean maybe wait until they've left the property then your good to go, gonna be a moist few nights though. 2 weeks is standard until its dry enough to start the painting process so long as there is some good passive ventilation and its reasonably dry time of year, if its wet as hell then up to a month before you can start painting, or gently force dry it with a dehumidifier (my new best friend to speed up the process on various things!).

I dunno, wasn't going to assume he was dropping 7 figures on a property and then immediately 200k + on an entire replacement single story extension + lush magazine quality kitchen. Might just want it to be functional for a bit whilst they work their way around all the rooms.

Saying that, literally without fail, every property thats sold near me (Glasgow) thats been on our 'hit' list thats sold since early 2020 has 1) Gone for more than anything else on the entire street, despite being firmly in our 'hit' list, because its a pile and the only way we could afford one of the actual houses 2) despite new owners paying between 2x and 6x brand new mk8 Golf GTI over and above the asking price (which was already a joke), they've gone ahead and dropped north of 100/200k on an entire floor to ceiling glass murder window grand designs kitchen extension. 3) Some of them have then sold on again and somehow still made a profit (before tax, though suspect folk like this know how to avoid capital gains). So maybe they will do that.
Not mean't to sound like a rant, just perplexed by the incredible insanity that is the UK property market, its like Toronto's property market, but on an almost country wide scale. Are private Chinese property investor's moving into the UK in large numbers now, or is it still just a few? Briefly lived in Shanghai and was in total awe/shock of the way things work there and the cost.

Are private Chinese property investor's moving into the UK in large numbers now, or is it still just a few

This is a red herring. Chinese money has not been relevant in London for 5 years or so (see the failure of Nine Elms). People living and working in the UK just have a lot more equity and access to leverage than you think.

Chinese property investor

I thought the bulk is sold in roadshows by developers, so were therefore always new builds.

Just street viewed Star Lane in an idle moment, and the street view image is a load of mattresses in the verge.

I just had a look and found something still smouldering! Brilliant.

Is that still in Bromley? it seemed like a perfect location to dump stuff cause no CCTV nearby.

That's all so disgusting. I hope they set up a trap around there sometime. I could well imagine that there are plenty of repeat offenders.

Nine Elms

Idk about this, interesting long read here on it.