Owning your own home

Mike has magic powers.

Anyone had any problems with rats / drains? If so what methods were most effective for prevention / management?

He's not that Magic Mike.

Friend just sent me this: https://media.onthemarket.com/properties/2097159/doc_0_0.pdf

So the place I’m going to see tomorrow has been listed for 1.1M, then 850, 800 and now 775.

Anyway of telling when the 1.1M listing was?

Try this chrome extension for rightmove
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/property-tracker/abgkpdjomdmemeefdefalbeogkmlmand?hl=en-GB

That's the one. A bit of a difference

That document was last edited in 2015, so at least 5 years ago

Covers made from chicken wire held in place with block pavers.

Thanks!

So:
1M in 2015/16
850k in 2019
800k then 775k in 2020

Looks like I need to wait until 2024 and it’ll be priced correctly.

Are you viewing that today Dammit? Nice to see you on the run to the train this morning....!

Yes, and likewise. Off to see it for 3pm, was getting breakfast at the place by the station- nice bunch in there.

I feel like 'highly unusual' must be an estate agent euph for something - Heath Robinson construction and no planning?

I like it though - definite 'mini Shining' vibes going on. I'd half expect a small straight corridor somewhere inside it.

I'll speculate that it's leasehold with bonkers restrictions and covenants, and the worst type of middle england kent / surrey arseholes as neighbours.

Freehold, and the neighbours are lovely. It’s overpriced, but the neighbour suggested “make a silly offer”.

If anyone asks, our neighbours are ‘lovely’ too.

So is there any catch other than the price?

Freehold, and the neighbours are lovely.

They are now. Neighbours change, and you don't get to choose. Looks like there are shared grounds - is that right?

So is there any catch other than the price?

The chaps in the golf club bar will assume you own the whole building and will sneer when they discover that you don't.

Definitely secret doors between the houses with the locks on their side.

It looks like there's pampas grass out front

They are now. Neighbours change, and you don't get to choose. Looks like there are shared grounds - is that right?

Now there's a tale. In this image you can see (supplied by the estate agent, and expertly annotated by them) that the fence is being indicated, and to the right of the fence as you look at it, the land that belongs to the house.

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Now, you're asking "what's the problem?" And I'll tell you - the access from the house to the acre of neatly mowed land is laid out in the red arrows, and it crosses the land that belongs to the neighbours, and has done since the 1800's.

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Now the neighbours have been there for 28 years, and they (very kindly) laid out the path and box-hedges that delineate the edge of the path, and are unequivocal about the owner of the house that I'm looking at being able to pass across their land to get to the land associated with the house.

But. If we fell out...

I don't know whether 200 years of using that access has any weight, or whether this is the sort of situation that would buy a Brommers analogue a new RS6, if there was an epochal falling out.

= I'd want to buy the end of the neighbours garden, or I might need a helicopter to get to my own garden.

Access arrangements like that should be in the deeds of both properties.

It's a little different but my parents back onto a cricket club. They had had access theough their back gate, down the edge of the cricket pitch and out onto a nearby road for 30+ years until the cricket club added a locked gate at the road end. A couple of letters and a bit of paperwork and my parents now have legal right of way along that path, it is written into the deeds of both and whoever buys my parents house gets the access too.