Owning your own home

My parents are selling a 1930s narrowboat for a less than half a deposit on a normal London house (£17k asking price, forum discount available).

Pros: The price, and it's reasonably nice
Cons: It's quite short, it's about 4 weeks away from London by canal, steering is a bit loose.

This looks amazing inside. Perhaps the well-known framebuilder should moonlight in interior decoration for small spaces.

my sister is looking to buy a flat at the moment and put an offer in on somewhere which was accepted, so she went ahead and arranged the survey. A week later the estate agent called her and said that someone had seen the flat at the same time as her and had put in a higher offer and would she like to match it. Obviously she was pissed off but said yes.

later that day she went onto the estate agents website and they had re uploaded the flat she'd had an offer accepted on but with a higher asking price.

That suggest to me that there was never a higher offer, and they were advertising a flat that had an offer on it as a new flat.

Is there anything illegal about doing this, or are they just regular estate agents playing tricks?

reading this I guess the latter https://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/jul/24/formal-offer-property-still-advertised

The warning here is to think about what this reveals about the seller. Is this the kind of person who will they try and raise the price again right at the moment of exchange?
Your sister should think through how she would respond in such a situation and what her relative bargaining power is. Could she credibly walk away from the sale (would she become homeless?), does the seller need to complete as part of an onward chain etc.

Abort, abort!

Or put the original offer in the contract and surprise the seller on exchange. Should be prepared to suck up contract arrangement fees if you do this though.

And clean up the poo the sellers will leave in the bedroom if you get away with it

it's not like a house, which you can let fall into tatty disrepair and some mug will still buy it

Yeah, this is what I'm getting at - boats are movable personal possessions, the value of which are defined by the value of the materials used to construct them, the quality of construction and their condition - in a 'normal' market*. Bricks and mortar homes are not, and are worth what people will pay for them, and you never know why they paid what they did.

You say 'mug', I say 'saw immense value in being able to send kid to the local highly rated school', or 'only top floor low rise flat in the area near the shops and bars'.

Of course, you could sell a boat at a profit, if you know what you are doing :)

* I guess the abnormal housing market is fucking up the boat market too. Someone should start building some narrow boats, sounds like there is demand.

I reckon you couldn't build them cheaply enough though - even £75 - 100k is probably below what they cost to build.

Aye - biggest barrier is probably the skills and expertise has disappeared.

Quick Google suggests that new boats are available from £60k to £200+k depending on size and spec.

I don't think there is any issue with supply. New yachts are readily available so narrow boats would be similar?

I don't think there is any issue with supply. New yachts are readily available so narrow boats would be similar?

Dunno. Narrowboats = cottage industry, Yachts: big money thus industrialised ?

Yachts: big money thus supports cottage industry skill ?

FTFY

Don't know what you mean!

These dudes seem to have reasonable stock:

http://newandusedboat.co.uk/new-boat-search/

Ah yeah, spendy though. I guess @ioreka was referring to the more affordable end of the market.

Ah well, whatevs. I want a narrowboat though.

All the big yachts are build to order and are expensive.

Why so expensive?

Boat builders also have relatively low output - certainly not on the scale of most other manufacturing. Also, the yacht building industry relies on a large degree of customisation to retain margin. Customisation requires more specialised skill sets to deliver.

So the big money in yachts supports the specialised skill sets.

There was a tax in the US years ago that when they implemented almost destroyed the entire custom boat industry as people stopped buying yachts.

See:

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/03/opinion/l-boat-luxury-tax-drives-an-industry-aground-926091.html

and same in Europe

http://www.economist.com/node/21560920

"A boat is a hole in the water into which you throw money"

Ah gotcha. Thanks.

Dunno about living on one but 20% of purchase price is the rule of thumb I've always heard.

Sold the fridge and washing machine the week before we move. Forum win.

Thanks to @Fox for the Siren. It's mental! Like porty-gose.

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This is a reasonable estimate of boat running costs.

https://www.waterways.org.uk/boating/buying/running_costs_of_owning_a_boat

Y (quite literal) MMV.

Having said that, if people in the UK maintained the structure of their houses properly they'd be spending a similar amount every few years.

Fella I know moved his boat from Gt Yarmouth to Southampton recently. It was £1500 in fuel.

It's not that big a boat.

Wood and water in a kitchen???
On a boat???

I remember watching the total at the pump as my dad topped up after summer fun day trips with a 350 lump in the back. Biiiig numbers, and that was 15 years ago when petrol was cheap. Most of it burnt just slogging in and out of the harbour.