Owning your own home

It's not really a surprise ping can make money tho is it.

70k with someone legit or 27,500 with ping.

For many people they can only choose the latter. If they just essentially want a shed on the roof (which is all a basic dormer is) then they might get away with using the P man.

He might also run off with their money, but you pay your money and take your choices in this world.

My fairly standard loft (didn't have plastic cladding or windows I guess) cost about £55k all in (including party wall, building control, ensuite, tiling, etc but excluding furniture, carpets, decorating,) in 2018.

I had a few quotes (from all-in-one companies) and they were broadly similar.

Yeah exactly, all depends what you want and level of service you are comfortable with. These folks are just flipping the place, all they care about is those 2 extra bedrooms on the Rightmore listing.

This is broadly in line with what I've seen heard 25-30% increase in cost for building across the last 3-4yrs. So 55k > 70k for fairly standard spec (but not back of a lorry) job.

Extra seems to have deleted all her stuff off this thread. Perhaps she commissioned one too many extra surveys and it's all gone up the pictures?

Wow, they were quite the feature for the past month. Felt like I was buying their house step by step.

Perhaps she commissioned one too many extra surveys and it's all gone up the pictures?

Perhaps she felt it was all getting a bit boys' club in here?

Yeah it's got a bit pile-on-y. They're nervous about buying their first house, it's understandable, and there's a lot of unknowns and they're definitely not the first person to ask about getting money off.

Coupla in-progress loft conversion photos. Main bedroom floor to ceiling will be just over 2.3m so should't feel like a boxy loft room, eaves bedroom and bathroom definitely will though....

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floor to ceiling will be just over 2.3m

How are you achieving that? It doesn't look like that ridgeline is that high.

I also like the small rainforest that your neighbours are growing.

It was 2.45 from top of original loft joists to U/S ridge board. New structure has been placed between the existing and using stressed ply skin etc to reduce the floor depth.

I also like the small rainforest that your neighbours are growing.

Only the finest ivy in South Norwood.

Blimey that loft looks massive! Tempted to do something with ours (1930's 3 detached ) but would be nowhere near the size of yours.

House is worth £300k so would be cheaper for me to sell and move.

It's why I bought the place. Only a 50sqm 2bed maisonette but the potential to turn it into a decent sized home was huge.

I think she got some pretty good advice on the whole actually. No idea if she took note of it or what's happened afterwards.

Yes. But tone is hard to communicate and there were a series of comments in quick succession that someone might feel are attacking them. It's one of the problems you get when a whole load of people reply on the same point - they can all come at once in response to your post rather than in a consecutive convo format.

Also they may have a lot on and realise that posting questions here wasn't helping them actually move forward and make decisions.

Our roof got flagged and we asked about money off and were told to jog on. Ultimately we probably paid too much at the time and should have negotiated more keenly at the start.

Hope you're taking it out so it doesn't infest your shiny new conversion?

Yep. One of the long weekend jobs is to cut back from the scaffold and ask the neighbours if they can get rid lower down

Our roof got flagged and we asked about money off and were told to jog on. Ultimately we probably paid too much at the time and should have negotiated more keenly at the start.

Easy to think this, but nobody knows how to negotiate, and even if you do, as a buyer your position is usually pretty weak, and there is a layer of idiots between you and the seller.

The bottom line is when you are buying and selling an asset that someone has, that you want, whilst you can try and negotiate over various aspects of the deal, you can jump up and down and shout and swear at everyone involved in the process, but the bottom line is and always had been this.

you need to be prepared to walk away.

If you are not prepared to walk away from the deal, then you are ultimately negotiating with an empty hand. And most sellers know it.

In other news, I've got a friend who bought a house with their partner 2 years ago in the middle of nowhere in Surrey. They paid 425, did nothing to the house part from plant some flowers. Now they've split up and are selling except for some reason they think they can now get 500k for it. It's been a couple of months and they've dropped to 475 but as you can imagine it's not going well. They've had 1 offer of 425 which was immediately declined. There's not enough similar houses that sold in the last year to get a good idea of what current market rate is but my feeling is it's basically what they originally paid for it. I'm mainly just enjoying the show.

you need to be prepared to walk away.

Yes, this is negotiation 101, have a viable alternative, so you can walk away :)

We did it. My regret is that we should have used our position to our advantage much more effectively, having gone to all the effort of securing a viable alternative. The pleasure of telling one seller and their snake of an agent to fuck off only lasts so long, although I since found out that not playing ball with us cost them a cool £50k, so there is that.

Where actually is in the middle of nowhere in Surrey?

Near Redhill somewhere. In a suburban little cul-de-sac. Not really rural with not exactly a large garden, still got neighbours on both sides but also not near a train station, school or shops or anything. The worst of all worlds.

I kinda thought they were being a bit cautious but the more it went on felt like they had maybe offered too much and were having a bit of buyer remorse.

Stressful buying something and i think people get caught up in the bidding and such and then once the dust settles they go oh fuck.

and then you look at your mortgage statement you go oh fuck.