Owning your own home

Thanks, they come recommended so I'll go with them in that case.

I’m living abroad for a while but need my flat in London for when I visit home 2-4 weeks a year. Does anyone know of a good AirBnB management company in London that can fully look after it whilst I am on the other side of the world? Aware it’s not the best for society, but I need access to it fairly regularly which rules out a normal long term rental.

It’s also got nowhere for a lockbox and is in a development of flats, has anyone got experience with key management services like KeyNest?

Any other ideas for this welcome, it’s probably available 10.5 months of the year.

is in a development of flats

What does your lease say about this? I know someone who wasn't allowed to do short term lets and someone in the same block persisted with it until the management company informed his mortgage provider.

Corporate lets could be another option. Demand for 1-6 month lets there.

Other option is just to suck it up and stay somewhere else when you are in London and let your flat normally. Going to be easiest for everyone.

What about a mate, and then stay somewhere else when you're over if they've got plans?

AirBnB management company

Would very much recommend against this. I'm aware of a case which went to tribunal a short time back which effectively ruled that running an airbnb - even if your lease didn't explicitly forbid it - would amount to running a business from a residential property and therefore usually a breach of another part of that lease. https://www.bradysolicitors.com/brady-blog/airbnb-court-decision/

Chances are you'd get away with it if your neighbours aren't inconvenienced. But if this is a long term plan you would have some legal exposure there.

No one bit over here, but anyone know anything about Ariston boilers? We have one that's being a dickhead. https://www.lfgss.com/comments/17106012/

It's better than it was but still throws
104 (requires manual reset)
1p1 (resets itself)

resulting in on/off hot water and someone having to hit the reset button during showers.

Once it's going after a 5-10mins of fucking about it seems to settle down but it's wasting a lot of water and causing a lot of "fucksakestupidfuckingshower" rants.

If you only need it for 2-4 weeks a year you should just let it long term and find yourself an AirBnb when you come back to London.

Rent it out long term managed via a local estate agent and just rent something on Airbnb yourself when needed.

Ha as above

Ok that’s a consensus! Thanks.

In that case, anyone got some great letting agent recommendations in Hither Green : Lewisham / Catford area? I bought from Stanfords and they weren’t the best, no experience with any other agents in the area.

Urban Patchwork in Surrey Quays have been great for me for the last 3.5 years. They might not stretch quite as far South as that, but definitely worth giving them a call to ask.

Limited experience letting my place on Airbnb when away agrees. One out of three parties managed to fuck up more stuff in one week than normal people in years.

JDM Blackheath were leagues ahead of everyone else locally when we sold in SE6 three years ago (funnily enough we were talking about how positive an experience it was earlier today). Don’t know what their letting is like though.

Thanks - will reach out.

@aggi any more pointers on corporate lets, have you used anyone good?

I've not used anyone over here sorry.

Any suggestions what's going on with this EPC for a house I'm looking at? Air source heat pump with supplementary electric rads = poor rating?

Biomass secondary heating... That's just a log burner right?

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Just curious, what is the biomass secondary heating?

Things like that EPC really wind me up.

Assumed insulation in roof and walls. Why not check?! Presumably if they assumed no insulation it would not be rated as "good".

Double glazing "good" but not all double glazing is equal.

Yeah, biomass will be a long burner or similar.

I am not an expert, but imagine the poor rating for the main heating system is based on the presence of electric heaters. They are a lot more expensive to heat a home than a gas system, for example, just because of the cost of gas versus electric.

Wouldn't checking involve punching some holes in walls? I assume the owners weren't up for that. Maybe assumed based on the age of the build, or maybe just a wild guess.

@hazzelfrazzel yeah that's what I figured, although you'd think this would average out to, err... average at least. Will have to visit to work out what's going on exactly.

checking involve punching some holes

I mean yeah they probably didn't fancy this, which is fair enough. But you would have thought the reporting system could accommodate a rating of 'undetermined' which is accurate. If we (all people, everywhere) are to improve the energy efficiency of our houses we have to do better than assuming.

I'm biased perhaps because I've seen some totally misleading or outright wrong stuff on EPCs or surveys. In my opinion there is plenty of scope for giving a range of possibilities for things not surveyed, rather than just saying 'assume insulated, therefore assume good'.

You may be right that the age, type etc gives further clues; to be honest I'm just ranting because I'm grumpy, but in general I think I've got a point.

Edit: wrote the above without noticing that you're the one looking at the house. Good luck; let us know what the outcome is!

Totally, it seems like a very vague assessment of building performance and doesn't really tell anyone anything very useful. It's easy to use as a yardstick when you can pretty much have a guess at what it's telling you anyway, but pretty much useless in scenarios like above, which will presumably become more common as people try and upgrade/retro-fit older homes.

Agreed, the EPC recommendation for our Passivhaus was that we should get solar water heating, despite already having hot water via PV (sunamp unit) and not being able to use solar thermal for the vast majority of the year due to the thermal store background temperature being too high... I explained this to the EPC person but they just scratched their head.

Anyone moving house very soon? I will have a decent amount of good condition boxes and tissue paper and bubble wrap available in the next couple of days. Collection SE6

This kind of stuff always popular in the local facebook/similar neighbourhood forums

Try Freecycle too