Owning your own home

Thanks. I'm glad it's not just me (although sorry to hear you're also in it for the long haul!). I feel a bit better about it now, probably because I've accepted we will be living like this for a lot longer than planned. Roof is finished now and rebuilding the bath starts tomorrow, so that's something!

A week or so I wrote:
"I had a question about charges. I bought a house just over a year ago which had a number of charges against it at the Land registry. Part of the completion involved lawyers exchanging letters saying that these would be dealt with, and they should all have been removed after completion.

I just found out that one of them is still there...

Is there anybody (eg regulatory body) I could reasonably contact to focus their minds and speed them up on resolving it, or do I just have to chase them until they act in getting rid of it?"

I just found out that it's the vendor's solicitor that's refusing to fulfil their side of the arrangement - apparently they need to return some form to my solicitor which the land registry needs to remove the charges. The vendor's solicitor is apparently ignoring all contact.

The vendor's solicitor is in breach of his undertakings, but is there anything else / more formal I can do to try to force this issue (presumably aimed at the vendor's solicitor)? Both mine (and the vendor's) solicitor are insisting that all communication only happens between the two of them... BUT NO COMMUNICATION IS HAPPENING :(

Breach of undertaking is, ethically speaking, one of the worst things a solicitor can do (I am a solicitor, although not resi property - worrying about being in breach of undertaking is the sort of thing that keeps us up at night).

Speak to the SRA... http://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems.page

But if you get a message through to the solicitor to tell them you think they are in breach of their undertaking (and you are contacting the SRA), I'd be amazed if that doesn't make them sort it as soon as possible. The relevant solicitor is likely to get struck off if they don't fulfil their undertaking.

Exchanged on some land in Devon, revised drawings to go off to the planners this month.

Where abouts? How did you find the land?

Where abouts? How did you find the land?

errr, with his donkey, obviously.

Valuation DONE. Waiting for the bank now and homebuyers survey....

Alternatively, the High Court has the jurisdiction to enforce solicitors' undertakings as part of its jurisdiction over officers of the court. Something of a sledgehammer to crack a nut, so it's the option of last resort.

Honiton, Devon (was searching all over the south west though).

Was looking for about 8 months... used the following methods:

• Asking everyone you know that lives in the area.
  
• Seeing if farmers would sell off some agricultural land near towns/villages.
  
• "Land permission" keyword searches on all estate agent sites.
  
• Self-build forums/communities plot listings.
  
• Asking pub landlords to see if they know anyone with small parcels of land (in towns/villages) and leaving contact details.
  
  

In the end, someone in my parent's home town was dividing up their land and I managed to find it early (several offers in the first day, ours was lower, but he knew my family so went with it, lovely seller)!

Lovely part of the world.

Are you round there at the moment or is this a new move?

Are we going to see you on Grand Designs?

@JonoMarshall
Fuck yeah Honiton!
Which home town?
(sorry for noseyness- is round the corner from family- Upottery)

Good stuff Jon! Just down the road from my old place at Hatcher close?!

That's my surname and weirdly someone from my hometown now lives in Honey Town

Heh, Honiton (autocorrect)

Won't be moving there for a few years yet, it's going to take a while to get things built. Living in London currently.

Yeah Sam: Brand Lane, not far from your old digs at all!

I'm against Grand Designs, girlfriend is all for it, apparently it adds 5k to the value of your home... meh. I think House That 100k Built might be more appropriate (although we are doing the whole Passivehaus thing).

Just got home to find an envelope with our contract, deeds and pre-exchange stuff.

Fuck.

Exchanging this week. Its only just starting to set in.

Lolz from coming back from a residents and tenants association meeting. Total popcorn.
Nic and I bought the avg age down considerably and we're kinda old!
Treasurer's name is Maude. She was awesome.
Can't wait for the next one, where we get to vote for creating a SUPER TRA with another estate across the rd.

Super TRA? Do it. Then use your combined might to start taking over all the TRAs in London.

Tell me about it. I went to one once for our estate, it was full of NIMBYs and people who were just concerned about where they were going to park (again, all older than us). The people running the meeting were also pretty useless. Suffice to say, I've not gone back to another one.

no community spirit

People who are just out to look after themselves.

Turned to Nic and said, "this could be you in 25 yrs time. Let's take over the TRA!"

But there's no way you (I) could do it and not get arrested for physical or verbal abuse.
The words "build a bridge and get over it" spring to mind about how some pamphlets were not delivered to the other estate telling them about this meeting.

I'm in it for the popcorn. Actually going to bring popcorn next time.

ha ha

Bonus points if you show up in a Michael Jackson Thriller style outfit.

no surrender to the tra?

People with system boilers: what happens when your tank runs out of hot water? Do you have to wait a while before you have hot water again?

Yes, although if you have an immersion heater you can turn that on and it'll heat up the top part of the tank pretty quickly. Also the tank doesn't heat up uniformly so you'll get a small amount of reasonably hot water pretty quickly because it'll rise to the top.