Owning your own home

Can't sell it with the hole in my ceiling and damp issue which finds its way out into my flat. However, once its sorted... next summer.. hopefully

I'm.sorry. I remeber being in a flat with Lambeth council as my management company, was excruciating and terrible.

Not many calculators out there that will work out all the costs for you, it would be a spreadsheet job.

Assuming you’re also looking at whether you should port the mortgage or consider a brand new mortgage/lender and pay the early penalty charge to leave the current deal? Also as lenders lend different amounts, it’s not unusual at the moment to tactically pay the early repayment charge to move to a lender that offers loads more lending. Crazily, there are lenders that are back up to lending 5.5x - 6x salary multiples in certain cases.

I can work out some numbers for you if you like? (I’m a broker)

If I want a cctv system ASAP what's the easiest and affordable one I can get?

I want to record if anyone comes onto our front drive/garden/door.

I have a home storage thing with lots of tb so would like to send all footage to that.

For now I don't care about other features.

A eufy camera in a window?

So just something like this plus an sds card? https://amzn.eu/d/htYhEJE

Neighbour not available for chats, that sounds like a nightmare.

I do that with the Tapo C200 inside the window.

Cheers. That looks good and gvfm. Also available from Argos.

Anyone else know if there is a similar option I could save the data to hard drive on my WiFi network?

+1 for Eufy, myself and family both use them. I bought direct and worked out cheaper at the time.

Another +1 for eufy.

Been using them for ages. Excellent.

Referral code if you’re interested: https://share-eu.eufylife.com/v1/shopping/s/g/LS0YHnuHD

Can anyone find a hole in my reasoning here?

We're in the fortunate position of being able to pay off the mortgage at the end of its current term, although it would leave us with basically zero savings.

Instead of doing that, we can take out a fee-free 2 (or 3 or 5) year offset mortgage with the same provider (so no paperwork). It allows 100% offsetting, so we could dump all our current savings into that and use the time to build up some headroom.

‘Free’ offset mortgage keeping the balance accessible sounds much better than no mortgage and no savings to me. I can’t see a down side vs just paying it off

That’s good. Question is what interest rate are you paying on the last bit of the mortgage? Can your savings make more money in an investment isa etc? Savings accounts are still paying high rates. It’s tempting to pay off a mortgage quickly but it’s not always the best option.

It'll be 4.5% or so because it's about to come to an end so basically the same as savings would be after tax.

Yeah, paying off mortgage vs investment is definitely another decision. But if purely looking at paying off vs offset then I’m not sure if there’s a downside to the offset

Most of the Eufy plug in stuff (not battery/solar) will write to a nas but unless your nas has a built in function to record rtsp streams it may not be that easy (and reliable).

But finding consumer level stuff that easily records to a nas isn't that easy.

Sounds like a winner…..based on that info go 5 years.

If you were paying a repayment mortgage, you would typically still have a monthly mortgage commitment, but that’s not a problem if you can still afford it monthly.

No interest would be charged if you’ve offset, so it would come off the remaining mortgage balance, reducing the amount you would need to offset against.

Worth transferring some money into other savings if you start exceeding the mortgage balance as you won’t get interest from the surplus funds.

I would recommend a 2 year probably, as a 3 or 5 year would still have a penalty to early repay the mortgage if you decided to get rid once savings are higher, or move house and not port the mortgage. The chances are, rates will be cheaper in 2 years compared to the 5 years, and you might prefer the lower risk of paying exit penalties. Depends on how quickly you’re able to build up a comfortable buffer of savings.
Even if rates are 25% for offset mortgages in 2 years, it wouldn’t matter to you, if you’ve offset 100% of the mortgage. But an early exit penalty of 3,4 or 5% might be pretty annoying if you wanted to settle/move home.

That's a lot of products!

What do I need if I want to put one on my window sill to record my front area?

I'd get one of these if you're putting it inside
https://security-mall-eu.eufylife.com/s/uk/variant/t8400/T84002W3?jump=3

One of these if you're putting it outside
https://security-mall-eu.eufylife.com/s/uk/variant/outdoor-cam-c24/T8441221?jump=3

If you're putting it inside you may need something to block outside light from inside to prevent reflections (this kind of thing, you can obviously make one yourself https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/285309067929 )

Good. This matches what I was thinking. Keeps the option open to be able to easily borrow more against the mortgage if we want to do something expensive to the house as well.

I got them writing to a synology NAS very easily as well. Apparently you have to be a bit cautious which disk you are targeting because the motion activity can create a lot of small amounts of disk writes.

Exactly what Aggi recommended. The 220 outdoor is what I have looking over my drive. It’s small, the microsd card covers weeks of always on recording before writing over the earliest one and quality is great.

Be aware they’re USB powered. I drilled a small hole to run into the garage for power and just filled with clear silicone.

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OK. So sounds like the indoor / C120 is the way to go.

Retrieving from my storage (WD My Cloud Home, rather than a proper NAS) was a nice to have as I guess it would have allowed me to check it more easily. But it's not the end of the world.