Owning your own home

We took our moving costs from equity in the house and adjusted new mortgage to suit.

Ok, that's actually good to hear or we're stuck for a year or more. I guess some searches need paying prior to exchange from memory but that's a fairly small cost

We aimed to get everything done from the equity but we failed to budget for a few things, including £3k in early repayment fees, double charges from the movers, a hotel for the night when we didn't exchange on time, and takeouts / DIY stuff while we were getting the place livable. Get some savings if you can, it's easy to miss stuff, and a bad time to have to put it on the credit card

Or just over egg it slightly and use the surplus for any home improvements should there be any left. An expensive loan in the long term but probably only a few quid a month extra for peace of mind.

When I bought, I discovered that you could download Land Registry sold prices for whole postcodes. I had way more price data than the estate agents who certainly seemed to favour a finger in the air approach.

In my experience, the mortgage company cares little about what you are using the mortgage for so long as the LTV is sufficient.

The stamp duty holiday came in whilst we were buying and we didn't adjust the mortgage and ended up buying a car instead with some of the surplus.

Re Neighbours, there are some really nice streets round our way including ours that have street whatsapps, annual street party etc. Often shorter ones or ones with LTN style interventions.

However my impression of some of the streets with bigger houses such as Vicarage and Manor Rd is that a lot more of them are flats and also the streets are much longer so there is less of a community feel. That's just my assumption though, not actually based on hard evidence.

Re: Manor Road, the road used to be nice and quiet but recent changes in traffic in nearby streets made it busier and noisier. Can’t be closed to traffic as it leads into LBR. Also lots of littering. On the plus side odd numbers have huge gardens and good orientation.

In summary: I would choose a quieter side road

what i'm fearing is that I have so many criteria that it will be difficult to find somewhere in budget. Although as we are not forced sellers, we can wait.

Considering 4 areas now:
golden triangle between church rd / high rd / LBR
area directly above this bounded roughly by hainault rd, whipps cross rd / LBR / high rd
roads off francis rd east and west
and back in E17, east of the village up to woodford new rd / forest rd / LBR

however within that:
not on a through road
ideally not directly adjoining any of the main roads (would consider if blocked to traffic at one end and at least 50 yards back)
no thin houses (less than about 17' wide)
min 30ft garden
ideally southish facing back garden
etc

last time around we just bought the biggest house we could find and afford so it was a bit simpler.

It’s only the top half of Manor Road that’s become more of a rat run; the lower half is still quiet.

Agreed about the community aspect of shorter, LTN’ed streets. We had to campaign to get the end of ours closed off, as the modal closure half way down Vicarage Road would have turned ours into a rat run; the WhatsApp group followed shortly afterwards.

Now most of the roads parallel to ours have been locked off also. It’s fabulous, but there was a lot of vocal resistance from some residents, including several people repeatedly pouring bleach into the new planters acting as LTN roadblocks… mind boggling.

This is a problem with ltn and other quickly implemented road restrictions, the street with the most people able to communicate and curry favour with councillors get the quiet street they always wanted, moves and compounds the issues on other streets. Kinda a "not my problem mate".

Our street in Glasgow is currently open to traffic in all directions but apart from school drop off time is super quiet, like quieter than a rural village. Great neighbours and general vibe.

About to change though as planning is submitted for turning the area into a one way system with all outbound traffic for entire neighbourhood has to go down our street as will be the single only way out.

The wattsapp groups and email circulars are on fire right now. It's pretty ugly #1stworldproblems for sure.

Wood stoves.

I know they're taboo

I think the main issue when people ask here is the idea of fitting one in London's famous London where the air quality is already awful and you contribute to local particulate pollution.

In rural Spain I think you're allowed a pass on that front. Presumably you don't have mains gas, so any gas needs to be delivered (creating additional CO2), which means using a clean burning stove could mean lower carbon emissions, as well as a renewable source of energy (presumably you're surrounded by free or cheap wood, again not true in London)?

In Spain you obviously won't need to buy a DEFRA-approved one but I'd encourage you to if only for the health of your family in the immediate area.

Don't forget to budget for all the little things that add up. Some real life examples from my spreadsheet last time we moved:

1. Parking suspension for moving into new place (£80)
   
2. Printer ink for conveyancing (£50)
   
3. Dochub Pro so I could edit PDFs (for conveyancing, £15)
   
4. Visitor parking permits for moving from old place (£28)
   
5. Paying for things to be posted Special Delivery when your seller/buyer fucks something up
   
6. Resident parking permit at new place if you have a car (£55 but Waltham Forest is cheap)
   
7. Mail redirection (£42)
   
8. New wheelie bins if you have to pay for them (£40)
   
9. Stickers for the wheelie bins so they don't get pinched (£3)
   
10. Cost of car/home/building insurance going up/down (all of ours went up as our micro area is prone to flooding - car went up £50 for example)
    
11. Cost of fitting new locks when the agent only gives you one key and you don't trust the old sellers not to still have keys (£32 because I did this myself, a locksmith would be a lot more expensive)
    
12. Legal cover because the cash buyer you sold to is well off and you're paranoid something will fail and she'll try and sue you (£24)
    
13. Having to pay your neighbour's legal costs for a deed of variation when you realise you never amended the Land Registry plans after doing building work (£2k)
    
14. Paying half of your buyer's moving costs as an 'act of goodwill' because of (13.) and because you'd do anything to stop her reducing her offer (£800)
    
15. Gas safe/electrical safety/asbestos survey costs if required when selling your place (our gas was £60)
    
16. Home buyer's protection insurance (recommended, £50)
    
17. Land Registry searches on neighbours before you seal the deal (see bastard neighbours thread - £6)
    
    

YMMV of course. Don't forget all the possible conveyancing charges. You know, things like leasehold supplement, ID & anti-money laundering checks, financial transaction fees, Land Registry fee, file storage, mortgage fee, authentication of buyer's lawyers, VAT on legal charges...

Your conveyancer may well 'forget' to detail all of these in advance. Good luck!

It's kinda hard to know if this is doable without knowing your budget.

If you want freehold rather than leasehold I'd guess you'd need a budget of a minimum of 600k for your onward (downsizing) purchase to achieve what you want.

13, 14, wow

We had a side extension done over 10 years ago, should we have updated Land Registry? Never occurred to us.

Yes, presuming the external demise changed. You can move things around inside all you like and they don't care.

Our buyer's conveyancing solicitor was great (we now recommend her to people, not our own...) and possibly less good conveyancers wouldn't have spotted it, but not a risk I'd want to take given the very small cost of submitting updated plans to the Land Registry.

Also this was a shared freehold flat, if it was freehold house I'm not sure it would matter (but I don't think I'll take the chance now we own one and are planning to extend).

Thanks. Yes, the overall building footprint changed, extended the kitchen sideways into what was previously outside space.

Might as well update the record as we have time.

Oh for sure defra.

Yes, we have unlimited and free supply of felled wood for fire, I just need to go with tractor to collect it. Our electricity is only 8kw total and no gas at all. So fire makes sense. I'd love solar panels, batteries and heat pump but can't afford that.

I'm sure this is obvious but wood needs to be dry. Wet wood will not heat effectively and and produces much more air pollution.

So worth getting started with cutting and stacking so it can season.

I have about 36m3 of wood stacked from collection last winter. :)

Yes, presuming the external demise changed.

Hm, are there limits? Should we have done it for the tiny porch we added?

Welcome to my new life

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airy

Hm, are there limits?

No because our was for a glass box that must have been about one metre square!

Should we have done it for the tiny porch we added?

I don't know mainly because IANAL. When we sold we needed a deed of variation of a lease plan, so that wouldn't be needed for a freehold house. This Land Registry response suggests you don't need to do it at all for a freehold house, but again IANAL...
https://customerhelp.landregistry.gov.uk/forums/general-info-and-guidance/3a4aedf7-906a-ed11-a81b-6045bdcf8811?page=1

Yet another reason I would never own anything but a simple freehold place ever again!

Quick Google suggests it's not necessary to update land registry for changes which do not affect the boundaries of the property (as opposed to the dwelling) for freehold places.