Owning your own home

congrats!

Nice one Gary, I had a feeling it was your turn for some luck but didn't want to jinx it.

Congrats and open a bottle 🥂

@Glws @swedeee @CYOA @TheButchersDog
Thanks, took over a year, 3 buyers, 1 lazy solicitor and 1 failed purchase later though this is a better flat (on the same 50/60's estate we wanted and once owned by Richard Ayoade) with less work to do and facing the right way (south) and a great view plus the seller agreed to pay for a new lift which made it even cheaper.
The "you are fucking kidding me" moment at 4pm friday was finding out we were borrowing the full amount on the agreement in principle which was over 40k more than needed, because nobody gave us any notice of when the final lending amount would be required and because it was known we had discussed refurb costs and 3 different additional budget forecasts for us it was obvious that decision was to be made, only we had no idea when?
not helped by being sent the wrong redemption statement to look at and try and work out how much it was going to cost us while parter rightly so is having a meltdown. T&C's were inconclusive and no idea if the 10% overpayment allowed (not enough to cover the unwanted borrowing) would bring payments down and how to deal with the remainder after that?
The prospect of having to pay a significant chunk of money every month for 2 years was not something we were going to suck up but unless we exchanged pronto the seller was going to go back to rental and our buyer would no longer have a mortgage deal and his rental contract ends on Friday.

Not a great weekend but going over things with both bank and broker this morning meant it's going to cost us a few hundred quid in fee's not a few hundred extra a month on the mortgage.

currently on the Westmalle strong Belgian stuff and feel like a weight has removed from our shoulders.

Oh, and the view:

2 Attachments

beautiful

Dreamy, where is it? Hampstead?!

CP

Crystal Palace? Lovely view.

It's Crystal Palace but on the southernmost part of the Dulwich Estate,
Hampstead is way way out of budget! we walk on the heath a bit as my partner is (was) in north london but this flat is just down the road from my current place in CP and I love it round here.

Did you pay extra for the blue skies?

Photoshopped

So good. Location and light are the most important things.

Pft. Proximity to sushi. Nothing else matters. Don’t need windows if you’ve got sushi.

That goes in with location surely?

Sushi? Meh. Pub + kebab shop

that is superb view and now you can put the cluster fuck stuff behind you. Mental hearing about some of the crazy shenanigans in here

Is now a bad time to buy a new place? Asking for a friend.

How much are people paying for movers, and who is recommended? Asking for a colleague.

Find a reputable local firm and get some detailed quotes. When we moved last year my wife booked some random internet firm and it was a complete nightmare. The two Romanian guys they sent were very hard-working but the van was too small, the quote was massively under-specified so we ended up paying about twice the original "cheap" quote. The whole thing was a joke.

We are about to pay more than we though (2.4k not 1.6k we expected) with Grays in Hackney as i think somebody on here recommended them. other quotes were more or a little bit less but those quotes were not offering the same levels of service.

Every question has been replied with ‘not a problem’ ‘don’t worry we can do that for you’ and the reviews online all say how good the service has been.

this is for a full pack and move of a 1bed flat with not loads of furniture but a loft full of possessions that will half fill a garage plus taking as few things apart. no waiting charge if there is a delay with keys as some give you the option of insuring against this.
full pack on 1 day, move the next. N4 to SE19 4 men and 2 vans as the big one is on a long distance job.

My downstairs neighbour runs http://www.bigredremovals.com/

I have never used them myself but I know the neighbour and a whole load of his people and they seem fine.

We used F Smith and Son and paid ~2k with packing for a 2 bed, moving 30 mins away in SE zone 5. Plus dismantle and rebuild a few bits of furniture like beds so we could focus on unpacking at the other end.

They were communicative, helpful and friendly on both ends, as well as in planning. Showed up when they said they would, and were considerate when packing to double check about things we wanted left out, even though we had set aside a box. The team we had were also considerate of bikes, which sounds silly, but without prompting they ackowledged that they were expensive and fragile items (in the context of being loaded onto a lorry full of furniture.) and they were treated accordingly.

One lamp did unfortunately break, but they didn’t quibble at all about sending over cash for a new replacement.

SE19

Just up the hill from me if you need a lend of any tools. I need to further their justification.

I paid £1.5k a couple of years ago with https://www.storkremovals.co.uk/ who were very good.
3 bed flat to a place just down the road.
Included packing (which I would hugely recommend) and dismantling and reassembling furniture like beds that were too big to get out of the door.

Well in that case, we used Russell & Co in Malvern and couldn't rate them more highly.

Thanks, think i have most bases covered but will buy an SDS as i need to do masonry fixings through 60mm insulation but that's a handy thing to have.
are you the chap who bought on the kingswood and had issues with Dulwich?