Owning your own home

Go for it!

that sounds great

She's coming to London tonight. She's told me that she'd like to start looking for a place together. We'll talk about it tomorrow while we're looking at a few short-term rooms to store me in the meantime. It's a nerve-wracking idea but could be lovely.

going from a Spark to a Flame?

How can I find the sales listing for a reposession in my block?

And Sparky: http://www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/26733777?search_identifier=2e97c6d3341137211ae5bc7ae4417029

crazy, I stayed in bigger hotel rooms than that.

That's quite nice dammit.

^^^ You could make an enquiry on Land Registry http://www.landregistry.gov.uk/public/online-services to identify who the lender is and try contacting them to find how they plan on disposing of it as it may go direct to auction and additionally set up notifications on Right Move and the like for any new properties listed under the postcode.

Had the valuer round this morning, he said "when finished this will be high two's to low three's, in fact your going to be limited by the glass ceiling of what the other flats have sold for, but right now, with every room needing work, it's going to be down to the comparables".

So, there is a 3 bed of roughly the same size currently for sale with a firm offer of £214,225, but it's got the old layout with a much smaller kitchen, and we know that they've had a real problem with the roof leaking over the last 20 years.

The other one I am looking for is a repo, which is the same floor as us and (the valuer says) a three bed, although me Julie thinks its a two, but that's on for £215,000- in theory, I cannot find the listing.

If it is a two bed then that's great news, as it should push ours up.

Stressful!

It's a known fact that wardrobe doors put an extra 40,000 to 50,000 on any valuation

What valuation were you hoping for. I'm guessing yours can only be a few handfuls of £,000's of being finished so should be valued accordingly.

Are you thinking of buying the repo too?

To get 60% ltv we need ~260K, which I think is a stretch if the place had to be on the market tomorrow.

I'd certainly like to have a look at the repo, mainly because I'm nosy, however I'd quite like to buy a couple of other flats in the block and let them out.

You'll soon get the hump with letting out property on your doorstep after having yet another Sunday morning's planned ride ruined by a tenant with a stupid problem that won't wait which is why I use a letting agent.
Last issue I had was an email at 4pm on Saturday asking how to turn the heating on....

Good point- I'm willing to go through a bit of pain now in order to have more than £10 when I retire though.

I just had a flat valued for a remortgage. The valuer had to go to the letting agent to pick up the key. I had them prepare some suitable comparables to help steer the valuer in the right direction. I got the result I was looking for and have now freed up some equity for the next project. Hmmm. Forest Hill you say?

^^ My properties hopefully will be my pension. Otherwise I'm fooked!

^^That's why I'm looking for other flats in my block to compare with.

It's not really a problem, but if they come back with a low valuation I'd be tempted to go for a tracker for a year whilst I tile the bathroom etc, then get it revalued again.

Just got back some water and drainage search and reports.

How on earth can that be 17 pages long?

Only 17?

Mine ran close to 30 pages....

Our environmental search was bloody loads too.

Been an interesting week for flat valuations.

We're remortgaging, so an official valuer came round, nice chap but obviously his responsibility is to the mortgage company.

If we default and HSBC foreclose they need to 100% guarantee that they'll get what the valuer says, so he has said 215K.

Today we had a local estate agent round who said 225, 230 for the right person.

This is in light of every single room still needing to be finished- what can I say, I'm lazy.

What both the valuer and the estate agent agreed on is that once we'd finished the place would be "high two hundreds to low three hundreds", which was good to hear.

However, it means that we don't hit the 60% loan to value ratio that we needed for the 3.49% fixed rate we were after.

I'm thinking of going to a base rate tracker at 3.79% whilst I tile the bathroom etc, then get the place revalued and remortgage again when we know we can get a 250K valuation- which should be mid-next year.

Is this a silly idea? Alternatives?

Don't you already have a mortgage on the place?
why are you looking to borrow more?

Our two year fixed rate deal came to an end, and they put us onto a 4.99% rate.

So we need to move onto a better rate, hence the remortgage.

Not looking to borrow any more.

I wonder if it might be worth staying on the existing rate for a bit, wait for house prices to recover, and do more work to finish the place before switching. It seems like agents are not very imaginative, and need to see the quality of the fit and finish before they can give an accurate value.

It's a no-fee transfer to the HSBC base rate tracker, we just go from 4.99% to 3.79%.

The base rate tracker has no term, and no penalty for overpaying, so we can remortgage again when we are ready- once we hit the 60% ltv then we can get 3.49% (well, we can right now).