Owning your own home

Also, leasehold stuff kinda sucks by default.

Urbanisation is not intended to be UKIP argument, this is also migration from inside the UK to London.
House prices in large German cities have also gone up while they remain low in rural areas, although not as much as in the UK. And financing for housing in Germany is cheaper than the UK (I know people on 10-20 year fixed at less than 2%, with high LTVs). I think your points are correct, but I am not sure they are the main contributors.

This hold true for everywhere I've lived, especially ex-council. Current place is a converted house and I can hear the tapping of upstairs' dog's nails as it paces in the morning

Data on London population growth. https://www.trustforlondon.org.uk/data/londons-population-over-time/

Could be part of the issue, plus in a converted house you generally know the people you're pissing off as they're the other half of the house you're in. Although I've been in a few low-rise, fairly modern, purpose built flats (5 stories or so) with pretty bad noise insulation.

Old LA ones seem to be the solidest built.

That's sort of my point.

How far out would you have to go to find a place a group of young people on near minimum wage could afford?

Even with a small garden and access to a big park we find #flatlife with two youngsters claustrophobic and tense, but we were both raised with huge gardens and big houses, it's just what yr used to isn't it, don't @ me

We outgrew our 10m x 10m garden by the time our daughter was about 5, all too easily balls would disappear over the fence. It's much easier to just go down to the local park if we want to play outside now.

(Unless it's the height of the summer and we can get the paddling pool and/or sprinkler out.)

We're in a house that's been cut up into flats so we have a private share of the garden but it's a faff to get to (down two flights of stairs, through a locked gate, across downstair's garden [no access problems], about a three minute round trip.

After ~10 years of living here the thing we miss most is having direct access to some outside space. It's just too much of a faff to use our bit of garden. When our daughter was young it wasn't long getting down there before we needed to go all the way back up to go to the toilet. Eating in the garden is lovely but it takes lots of planning to minimise the number of trips back and forth.

As others have said, you just get used to what you've got. I love living in a flat (especially as we couldn't afford a house in the area we wanted to live in) and we're lucky with the size of our flat, plus we've only one got one child (and a girl at that). We've also got really good neighbours upstairs and downstairs, but it could easily be much different if either were a pain in the arse.

When we lived in a flat on Evering Road it was part of a huge terrace, and we didn't set foot in the garden once in 3 years, it was a grotty shade trap and was just too much agg to get down there, I always said it would be amazing if every garden in that quadrant was demarcated and instead of rarely used private gardens there would be one huge shared 'private' park, complete with mature oaks. Even if you never used it it would look amazing from the rooms at the back of the houses. I'm probably overestimating my fellow mans ability to play nice.

We rented a flat in Copenhagen and they had a similar thing.

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Our new place is on Evering Road and has a balcony overlooking the private gardens at the back. We have no access to the one at the back of ours and just like most of the others we can see, looks like it’s never used. It’s a shame as they’re south facing.

I feel like my dream will become less and less likely as the money rolls in and the flats are turned back to houses, who will want to have a private garden and won't want to mingle with us scrotes... maybe something to consider after the bomb drops and we start to rebuild from scratch tho!

The houses on philbeach gardens and warwick road in earls court have a massive private garden they all share. Of course i lived on the wrong side of the road, so never had access and none of the fuckers on the right side of the road would give me a copy of the key to access it either.

A friend of mine lives on the right side of the road, but I've not yet managed to gain access to the gardens :(

Our office is on Portman Square and as a "resident" the company has a few keys which are kept on reception for employees to use during the day. It is a nice perk on a sunny day.

I once went to view a flat near finchley road station. They had done exactly that. Fantastic space... I was very disappointed to not live there.

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Cross post from the freecycle thread.

I have free block paving to give away, must be picked up this week.

I have used a pressure washer to clean them + used anti-fungal treatment, all in the hope to increase my chances at giving them away for free!

Pick up from New Cross, you will need to dismantle, load up and drive away.

Surface is broadly 2.5m x 5m + 0.8m × 5m, that's 16.5sqm.
They retail at £20/sqm so that's about £330 worth.

I am in New Cross SE14 5DB.

Cheers

Vince

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Had an estate agent come round to give us a valuation, mentioned we need to repaint the flat, so that we could get top dollar and not get into negotiations to lower asking price as buyer would won’t money off to repaint themselves.
Front room and bedroom is painted a couple of shades of yellow and orange, kitchen a light blue, and a bedroom a light pastel green.
Worth repainting? More trouble than its worth? How much do you actually lose if buyers want to repaint?

I think you'd have to be a bit of a helmet to ask for money off to change the colour tbh.

It's possible that bland twats (or potential landlords) would be put off by the walls not being beige but someone else might love it and think 'great no need to decorate'.

Sounds like your EA thinks it'll be tougher to sell the way it is...

Was thinking that, not sure why though. Does anyone move into a place totally loving the decor of the previous owner? And why would you want a beige front and cream house?

I think it’s more about whether it looks scruffy and whether the house looks cared for on a first impression - when did you paint the current colours?

Most people are planning to repaint but if it's freshly painted the whole place will look a bit less worn and more tempting.

Shades of yellow and orange could well be a bit off-putting to some and make people think that more work needs to be done and price accordingly.

People are lazy cunts, if they can live with the wall colours already in situ, they will.

Definitely worth repainting. Go with a neutral colour.

Painted when I brought the place ten years ago, then repainted a couple of rooms when my girlfriend moved in a year ago..
I don’t think it looks scruffy, or in need of a new coat of paint. If you don’t like the paint repaint it, not quite sure why I should to get someone to buy it. Doesn’t make any sense..
And I’d rather not. Got better things to be spending money on..