Owning your own home

the independent agent on the same street as my partners flat have been pretty good and have tried to get things over the line despite the flakey buyers.

the selling agent i know all about their tactics and am expecting a shitty email from T**** as he has previous form when i bought from them 7 years ago, they leave it 2 weeks and threaten you with pulling the sale because the survey/valuation/paperwork hasn’t been done.

I am not a child who needs the threat of no pudding before bedtime, or a puppy who shits by the door not outside.
Our buyer is in airBnB as he stoped his rental, we all want to get moved asap.
I’m actually looking forward to speaking to him and telling him what i think of his staged rants and how it doesn’t have any impact on the process.

Even the other agents in the area have spoken about the way they operate, first experience with them had me literally banging my head on the table in exasperation, now it’s his turn to be a verbal punchbag.

A friend of mine is buying a house and received the legal pack, there is a section regarding the leasehold on the land.
Turns out the house is freehold, the garden and car parking bays are freehold, but the common land is owned by Persimmon Housing. There is a ~£150 annual charge, but the pack refers to owners liability for repair costs.
I assume this is due to the roads being unadopted. She is obviously concerned that she buys the place and at some point in the future they can ask her for any amount of money to fix a problem.

She is trying to find out if there is a cap, or whether the council are likely to adopt the road at some point in the future.
Is there an insurance policy you can take out for this?

It is a new build estate, about 4 years old, in Aveley, Essex.

Not a solicitor, but I believe you need you look for a Section 38 Agreement.

Section 38 of the 1980 Act provides local authorities with the powers to enter into an
agreement to take over (adopt) and thereafter maintain at public expense a newly
constructed road.

Before entering into a Section 38 Agreement, the local authority will require that
developers (or landowners where this is different) obtain full planning permission, or
reserved matters consent where outline permission has been granted, for the development
from the relevant planning authority.

lines starting with a 'greater than' denote quoted text

Say you and another party both make an offer on a house, the other prospective buyer arranged their mortgage through the agent so obviously the agent stands to earn more from them so your offer mysteriously goes missing. Happened to me in Wathamstow 20 years ago, still rankles. That absurd situation where an intermediary in a large financial deal is plainly compromised.

I’m no saint of course, when selling our place with the Modern House I was asking how they achieve the best price, what they tell people etc and was a bit miffed when the agent said basically nothing. We just let people offer, totally closed bid system with no “well you’re close to the best offer but we can’t tell you what it is” bullshit.

Miffed turned to happy once I’d thought about it. Fully expected to gouge but in retrospect very glad that there was none of that.

I expect the totally closed system coupled with TheModernHouse air of exclusivity ends up meaning people just go in at the top end of their budget anyway

I personally think that at the low end of the market (400-800k) they do not get a higher price compared to similar properties. this is from viewing through them a particular kind of mid century property and through ‘normal’ agents and knowing what they have sold for. Their photography is of a way higher standard though and the people who do the viewings are not estate agents so no static charge from their suits or the overpowering stench of BOSS/Armani Code.
For the more Niche property they may earn their crust.

They were also just really nice to deal with. It’s good to think the buyer / offers had a similarly positive experience. A novelty in this game.

My experience with TMH as a potential buyer was I was surprised how not total sharks they were - to the point I became suspicious!

What are their fees like? We're not selling any time soon, but our place is right up their street architecturally (apart from the masses of crap everywhere and general untidiness).

Fwiw my experience of buying through yopa was similar

Dibs.

2% reduced to 1.75% if we did the viewings. As I made most of the stuff in our flat it made sense for me to talk nonsense about it.

Documents were found today and we are in the clear. Thanks for the advice dude! Maybe see you around Sydenham!

Lol.

Thanks @dbr

glad it all worked out.

Sydenham? never go there...
its the odd naming round here as Penge common only got changed to Crystal palace after the big greenhouse got built but CP is tiny as Anerly/Penge/Norwood/Gypsy Hill/Sydenham hill are all really close.
Technically i’ll be in Dulwich Wood estate, the people in the big posh houses near Gipsy Hill will say they live in Dulwich....

If anyone is looking for a place in New Cross (Zone 2), I am selling mine to move to the seaside.

Bike shed can be included. Fits 10+ bikes
I also lease a garage across the road that I can be transferred. Fits multiple motorbikes & cargo bikes.

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/126645221

Looking forward to tearing out this bizarre plumbing when we remove this downstairs bathroom. How many stopvalves does one shower need?

3 Attachments

That's 100% a video game puzzle and if you get the right combo of valves the water level will change and reveal a secret area

Are the coloured bands on the ball valve handles supposed to be blue for cold and red for hot?

Blue red for cold and blue red for hot obviously

If you see a Foxtons property advertised, is it fair to assume that they've lowballed the asking price and hope to bid way past that? Or does an asking-price offer have a chance?

I hope the secret area doesn't have anything to do with the fucking gigantic knife and collection of oddly named betamax tapes I found under the stairs when we moved in

I would expect the opposite - very punchy asking price. We had them round as part of our ‘beauty parade’ of 3-4 agents and they were the highest by a couple of %. neatly covering the higher fee quote ;-)

I had the same experience, but have heard about aggressive tactics towards buyers too. Guess I'll find out shortly.