Owning your own home

We converted our garage but detached house so dual access to garden and offstreet parking

Can't you do 6 months without needing a BTL mortgage? Or is that anecdotal?

Also, how would they find out?

Yes that's exactly what they'll do. They might ask if you are using any of the advance for a specific purpose and you'd just say home improvements. They then send the lot to your solicitor so you can buy the place and the 95pc you didn't need to buy the house on day one gets either sent to you as a cheque or you pay 40 quid and it's sent as a chaps transfer.

Brave! Do you really need the money? I wouldn't!

Dunno about Scotland but in England isn't there a bunch of stuff you have to do to make a place legally rent-able? Electrical certs and buying some kind of license from the local council spring to mind.

Do you need special permission from the bank or a particular type of mortgage for a one off sort of arrangement like this?

You need to read the small print of your mortgage.

Apparently in Glasgow you also need a licence from the council: https://www.airbnb.co.uk/help/article/1379#:~:text=have%20any%20questions.-,Scotland,-Hosts%20with%20new

I thought you were getting shafted by the meter maids for parking outside your place - did you manage to sort that all out?

Yeah - just told them to fuck off 😂

Offset mortgage sounds perfect for that? Example:

• £500k house
  
• £100k mortgage
  
• £400k deposit
  
• £75k in the offset account until you're ready to do the works
  
  

You're only paying interest on £25k then but still have access to the £75k

Repped

@tbc this is probably the best way to offset money until you need it.

A lot of lenders have a 6 month ownership rule prior to allowing a remortgage or further borrowing, so borrowing in advance if you’re likely to need the funds again within 6 months makes sense.

Unless you are relying on post works value for the amount of money you need to borrow?

An offset mortgage is likely to be significantly more expensive than a conventional mortgage. They are on average about 1pc higher than a normal mortgage. He'll be winning for the short period he is offset but he'll be significantly losing when he draws it down and the debt increases as the interest will be loaded up.

Most come with early repayment charges too, even if they are trackers, so it's not like he can redeem it and refinance to a normal mortgage without paying a minimum of 1pc erc.

Given the sums involved here (I am guessing but he hasn't said as he doesn't want to go to the golf club) a normal mortgage at the lowest rate of interest is likely the way to go. He can split the surplus between him and his wife for the few months it's not needed. Depending on their marginal tax rate they can benefit from either 1k or 2k of tax free interest generated on the money whilst it's on deposit. or any winnings from premium bonds are tax free.

You could risk it, but if something did go wrong your insurance probs won't cover you.

Im not super clued up on airbnb renting but i know its harder in glasgow now and if its anything like renting which i do know you need a bunch of stuff to make it ok. (Gas safety cert, electrical and a bunch of other stuff)

Cheers. I emailed the sparky I've used before and he's gonna have a look at stuff over the weekend and get back to me. Cheap and cheerful is probably fine but it would be neat to at least utilise timers or something. Then again, I'm not sure underfloor heating is suited to turning on and off all the time? We normally have it set to just bring the room to habitable.

A mate has just had £4k of service charge repaid after a very lengthy battle, something like £70k for all the flats involved. He still pays an outrageous amount but slightly less outrageous than before. Had to push very hard to get it sorted though.

A mate has just had £4k of service charge repaid after a very lengthy battle, something like £70k for all the flats involved. He still pays an outrageous amount but slightly less outrageous than before. Had to push very hard to get it sorted though.

Even if you win it's not guaranteed. Our old managing agents owe us 50% of service charges for the last five years or so, they're yet to send us a penny.

Somewhat strangely (I don't know all the details) the management agent are refusing to pay and it is the landlord that is paying and then going to try and get the money out of the MA after.

Currently in the process of buying a flat and I have the estate agent badgering me to get our solicitor to make initial enquires while we wait for searches. My solicitor has already told us that they are waiting for all of the search results before starting enquires. From what I’ve read online that’s a common thing for solicitors to do to save themself some time and enquire all in 1 go.

I’m not sure if I should be telling the estate agent to be patient or should be badgering my solicitor to just get started. Don’t really want to be telling them how to do their job.

For reference, offer was accepted start of March, and we’ve had some hold ups with dealing with Hackneys local search mess. The partial search from them is what we are waiting on.

Tell agent you're badgering your solicitor, do nothing.

£400k for a garden shed?

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/130256876#/?channel=RES_NEW

To be fair it's a nicely done shed.

Price per sq ft is absolutely ridiculous

It would value my old flat just the other side of the park in a very cool old warehouse at nearly 900k. In reality the people I sold it to in 2014 can't even get the price I sold it to them for as they have been trying to sell it for nearly a year now. They're probably going to end up being 30k down on the deal overall. E3 and E9 peaked a while ago - I'd have thought the shed would have been on for 350k at the absolute most and sell for slightly less than that.

Lovely location...

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I know I've said it before, but I really don't get the level of premium Viccy P attracts.

Not like I think it's shit, but lots of other places have a park with some cool pubs and mediocre transport connections.

lots of other places have a park with some cool pubs and mediocre transport connections and stabbings

Can anyone recommend a condensing tumble dryer that is going in a room without any real ventilation? Going to mount it on top of the washing machine. Fed up of having clothes horses taking up half my flat most of the week from me and my housemate’s washing
Cheers

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