Owning your own home

I would go with a local firm with a named surveyor and a good reputation if you can, even if it means paying a bit more.

Identical house one road over from ours is under offer for £25k less than we paid a year ago 😑

Foxton's still exist!?

Yes but not in it's original form. Jon Hunt, the founder, sold it in 2007 for £375 million.

I rode past his house recently, it is quite special and the rewilding work he's doing on the Wilderness Reserve is great.

He popped down to London for the day in a big yellow helicopter while we were there.

price drop seems to be one of those big ones where you can never speak to the same person again

I would definitely go with one where you can phone them up (possibly multiple times) and chat through. You get a better sense of what the issues are and how serious by actually talking to someone I find.

If it were me, all things being equal, I'd be going with the local firm.

This is all really good advice @ExTra

In my experience the only solicitors that complain about being pushed are the ones that are being slow.

They’re telling you about it because they know they’re being slow and they know you’ll be told this by the agent so they want to get their defence in early.

It’s obviously very tough telling a solicitor what to do if you’re inexperienced but if you want to limit the risk of losing the property and all the money you’ll be spending in the coming weeks you need to make sure they start working to the sellers’ high expectations rather than their own low ones.

Just tell them two people on a fixey forum told you so.

Although it would cost them more time which is why these sort of threats are so pointless. Until people go through with them

This is so true. I learnt the hard way that trying to predict a seller's behaviour by calculating their economic incentive is a waste of time! People do things against their own pure financial interest all the time in buying and selling houses - they get offended, they want to "teach someone a lesson", they don't want someone they don't like living in their precious house etc etc.

Ah yes. ‘it’s not about the money, it’s about the principle’ the most expensive phrase on earth.

Needs to get on with appointing that surveyor though, they might have a 4 week waiting list.

Ah yes. ‘it’s not about the money, it’s about the principle’ the most expensive phrase on earth.

And one of my favourites.

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I got it from you as it goes. I nearly credited you, but then decided to pass it off as my own work so I look clever.

Just make sure you don’t end up with a useless solicitor who spells your name wrong on important documents, sends a surveyor the wrong property on a similarly but still differently named road and then doesn’t tell anyone for several weeks, or you end up with 2 parts of your mortgage having different addresses one of which doesn’t exist so that when you log in to view your mortgage its completely wrong..

Just a few things to note, the rest i can’t put into writing as we are still in the PTSD phase and i have blanked them out.

Cook up some beats in there:
https://auctions.savills.co.uk/index.php?option=com_bidding&view=commission&layout=details&id=5398

That place is great

Was your interest better than now?

Wtf - really see no need to post that or use that very offensive term.

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Eh cba

Almost certainly. As cjr pointed out, we also sold in that market so probably got a better price then too. Anyway, wah wah, it’s all theoretical and we’re very lucky.

Our house will be on the market soon.

The photographer (who I think has done an outstanding job) somehow captured this shot. Spot the camera...

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you look for errors in the the LPE1, you pore over all local planning permission including expired and rejected, TPO's and local authority development zones. you price up the work that needs doing, get removal quotes, know when your offer runs out etc.

We seemed to spend a couple of hours nearly every weekend on 'stuff' but our solicitor was rubbish and we had a lot of multi page documents to go through and a lot of mortgage forecasts.
If we hadn't taken this forensic approach it could have cost us thousands down the line.
like the permission certificate granted for a boiler flue that was made invalid by putting it somewhere else which would have cost thousands to put right including ripping a kitchen and bathroom out.

Most people don't bother, or get a good solicitor but even they miss things.

like the permission certificate granted for a boiler flue that was made invalid by putting it somewhere else which would have cost thousands to put right including ripping a kitchen and bathroom out.

thread derail but how did you fix this, btw? or did you pull out. sounds unpleasant.

indemnity insurance which was around £250.
was a bit pissed to discover we paid for that not the seller, i blame the solicitor though in fairness she did sort it to cover internal work should it ever be picked up by leaseholder.
The brickwork would have to reinstated on the 6th floor so really could have been a nightmare.
I spotted the flue was quite close to a window (probably illegal) and had a plume kit fitted (against the estate rules) and pestered for a copy of the flue certificate the day we offered but didn't get it until 5 months later 2 weeks before exchange...