Owning your own home

I had a party wall thing a few years ago. I don't think you need to give a reason for an independent surveyor, they're obliged to provide that as an option.

From memory, the options you received on the party wall notice are 'consent', 'use same surveyor as neighbours' or 'use independent surveyor'.

I don't know why anyone wouldn't choose an independent surveyor (from my experience I'd definitely advise it), but you don't need to provide a reason for your choice and whichever you choose the neighbour is obliged to cover the cost.

Anyone have a recommendation for a loft conversion company? In SE London.

If you actually get on with your neighbours and they arent total cunts, costing them 3k for party wall surveyors is a sure fire way of absolutely torpedo-ing your neighbourly relationship with them and ensuring they fuck you over if you ever want to have building work done.

Its much better to see their plans, research and confirm their builders arent chancers, and let them get on with it, if so.

If they are cunts anyway then fair enough

We used this company:

https://visionarylofts.co.uk/

I'd definitely recommend them, they sub-contract the build out and the team who did ours were excellent: fast, tidy and flexible.

great opportunity for somebody
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/147119483?utm_campaign=property-details&utm_content=buying&utm_medium=sharing&utm_source=copytoclipboard#/?channel=RES_BUY

lol what on earth

"Accommodation
The buyer will be required to excavate the area below the ground floor in order to create a new self-contained flat (subject to obtaining all relevant consents)."

What the hell.

"No internal viewings" - yeah because you'd need a JCB to have a look

Let the floodgates open. Basement conversions for everyone.

Buy it.
Put it back up for auction for sub-basement development if/when you finish the works.
Make money.

Buy
Develop
House falls down
?
Profit

I wonder if either - a neighbour has done a basement so they know it’s viable and want to cash in, or a neighbour has tried to do a basement and been informed emphatically no chance, and they want to cash in.

Ta for this. Had the salesmen come over today, got good vibes so fingers crossed the quote isn't outrageous.

Who would want to live in a house whilst the basement was being dug out from underneath them? Is that really worth £5k?

Unless the flat/house above is a leasehold and it's the freeholder that is selling this...

SE19, like where I live (in SE23) is mostly clay substrate with a little bit of gravel on top in a few places.
Hard/expensive to get insurance to cover for subsidence.
ETA - There's quite a few houses in SW4 and Belgravia that have had basements dug out / extended beneath them. Sometimes with undesirable results.

Just bought a house with a vented hot water tank. The water tank in the loft (I assume there's one up there, I haven't actually seen it myself) seems to overflow sometimes, just for a short while. Is this normal, and of not what could be the cause? I've always had combis before?

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in my experience, this isn't normal. take a look at what's going on in the attic. could just be a sticky float valve.

Blatantly going to be a greedy freeholder fucking over the leaseholders for a bit of cash.

Seem to remember a similar auction for loft space/space above a house that got pulled.

Ah, this one
BBC News - Auction of 'airspace' above Battersea flats delayed
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-67648371

There's an incredible amount of loft space for sale in Berlin. Basically attics for loads of money that once you're poor will be nice apartments.

Get an engineer to check it, could be pumping over could be the ballcocks not shutting off. Best get it checked.

Does it co-incide with when the heater is running? Hot water expands and can trigger the pressure release overflow when it heats up.

Tends to yeah. I wondered if it was something like this.

Leak again. Really really got me down last week and had me wanting to move house, which may sound dramatic, but waking up to water, having a leak on and off for a year, thinking about your cowboy builders fuck ups daily / worrying about what's beneath the surface and having a difficult neighbour really grinds you down.

Still don't know if coming from upstairs or outside, but tends to be correlated with bad weather, making me think outside.

Going to call the insurers tomorrow/Fri. If it is outside, that's going to a huge problem because will involve going on neighbours drive, which he hates, and we've had scaffolding up in recent years.

I actually had a handyman I used pop up when the neighbour was out are fill a few cracks in the render.

First step is confidently finding out where it came from.

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what's above the ceiling which the light fitting is in? and does the prevailing wind drive rain against the wall in which that stained galls window is?

I'd be potentially interested in these areas

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