Owning your own home

Dream place.

The location is great. Those pubs up by the forest in Loughton look great on a sunny day (never been in one though).

You would definitely need that AI jacket to set you apart from the Essex Barbour brigade.

So good!

It's very Essex there

It's beautiful.
But desperately needs fun furniture instead of rams and more teak, and the garden is also not wild enough, houses like this need contrast imo.

Been in there a few times, Its a beautiful house.

The owner works for Vitsoe (or did) hence all the Rams.

Makes sense. But those chairs also exist with blue, red and yellow upholstery.
It's just that all the brown and white and clean stuff, plus a bit of curved teak makes it vey boring. Have a green kitchen, blue rug, orange curtains or at least a pale pink table?

Having lived next to a builders merchants yard before and been woken at 6:10 every morning by the alarm clock sound of the reversing lorries, never again.

That place is right by my old office, that whole stretch is horrible

Got to be honest, but the Travis Perkins place looks a bit too early wework loby meets east end coffee.

The other one is amazing.

Machine for living in

I've wondered for a while what these places were like, just down the road from us, and if they ever come up for sale. Now I know.

lovely. Except the garden which seems a bit naff

Yeah I was quite a fan of that and location seems nice

It’s good. Pretty safe and there are some things to do. The distance to transport and amenities beyond the lane is a bit limiting. MH reckons it’s a 20 min walk to Ealing Broadway which is inaccurate - it’s a big old hill to get over. Most folks here would drive it.

We have a lot of these houses near us, being a largely post war town. Definitely a lot less pimped and stylish than this.

Although when I delivered there were quite a few near St Albans with lovely original floors and reed glass dividers. I often wondered if these are the next victorian terraces. Especially as you can insulate and modernise them more easily.

that place is simply stunning. very exciting you are going to look at it. be ready to fall a little more in love dude

This is a noob question, but how are banks able to offer rates below the BOE base rate? I always thought it was an effective floor for rates.

Banks cost of capital is below BOE, because they have fixed deposits or issued bonds historically before rates increased?

The base rate is a cost at which they can borrow in bulk from a reliable lender. It’s not a hard limit on a rate a provider can charge.

And there are other sources of funding - like you say deposits, and things like capital markets.

So right now there is a price war and some are in the position to acquire customers by using alternative sources of capital and think that they will still profit during the lifetime of the loan because the base rate will come down in time.

A lot easier to modernise though it depends on the construction, our flat was built by Waites with a concrete deck and reinforced concrete supports, cavity walls and the ties are galvanised along with the windows, a few years earlier and it might be a different story, though when built the brick slips fell off the concrete edges of the floors so one block was rendered and the adhesive changed on latter buildings.
They didn’t scrimp on the concrete (none of that aerated shit) but there are some Waites concrete houses out there where they reskin them and there are even ‘Waites mortgages’ available.
I wouldn’t touch a Victorian property now, they don’t like moisture, the 80’s building I lived in looked like it was thrown up over a weekend.
Big difference is the size of the windows and the amount of light in most modernist post war properties once you update the windows to modern frames/low-e glazing and insulate they are nice places to live in.

Just moved in to an 80s place yesterday. After 10 years served in Victorian terraces it feels like an absolute revelation. Walls without damp, windows that fit and straight lines everywhere!

Obviously it isn't up to modern specs in terms of efficiency but it feels massively more comfortable to live in just due to the lack of drafts and better layout. No sexy curtain walls though.

every house is now listed as "offers in excess of £xxx". is this just EA BS or are places genuinely going for significantly over the stated price? this is london's famous east london.

in my head i am imagining:

seller - "offers over £xxx"
buyer - "ok, offer is £xxx+ £50k"
seller - "yeah ok then"
buyer - "but it needs xyz doing, offer is £xxx"
seller - "ok whatever, just don't take the piss"

i'm the seller in this hypothetical scenario.

I ignore the offers over bit.
Especially if it's been on the market a while. I just offer what I'm willing to pay based on previously sold prices in the area and how much I like it