Owning your own home

God that's nice. Wish my wife would let us move that far out.

We've just had an offer accepted on a scandi style place in Nailsea. The Bristol Market is mad at the moment, there are just no new houses coming on.

We accepted an offer on ours in February, but have missed out on a lots of places before we found one last week. Fortunately we have patient buyers.

Yeah, that's what is worrying me, the lack of stock...

Guessing the stamp duty deadline might mean stuff falling through and being re-listed....

We were mainly looking closer to Bristol, but realised that was based on our thinking from a couple of years ago, that Rachel would be commuting in to Bristol, but now both of us are permanently wfh we don't have that issue.

all of them are nice but i'd avoid the cotham road one. you'll have student either side of you which will just get tedious

tortworth road one could be extended in the future .. i'd probably lean towards that

I would rent out as it is. I rented a shithole for a while, it was livable but couldn't have done it for longer than a couple of years. Cheap, lots of space, great location... We moved out and then two or three sets of lufuguss polo players moved in, it was London's premier Polo Palace for a while. Landlord was waiting for planning permission to come through, win win for everyone... Just advertise it here, it'll be gone in seconds!

Give your tenants a long lease, cheap rent, but some white paint and let them decorate the place themselves, you'll be laughing...

It'll buy you time to figure out what to do with it down the track...

Congrats!

Just completed this morning after starting beginning of April, what a relief!

We started on the 25 of JANUARY... Hoping to exchange and complete today.

Ffffffuuuuu

Just completed!

Ours cleared the gutters, by rinsing it down into the drain. Gutters fine, drain blocked to fuck.

Had similar happen to our newly installed rainwater drainage after chimney work completed.

I was like, where is there some much debris around the drain?
Proceeds to block...

Wow that’s cutting it fine! Congrats

Nice! Where are you now? Have you sold the old place?

Definitely - I've had experience with them before - they suck but at least they have a web portal so I can do things remotely

Why not use someone who doesn't suck?

Why not use someone who doesn't suck?

Lol I thought this comment was a reply to the Labour/Starmer thread when I read it, took me a moment to work it out. Any recommendations? I'm using Premier Property Lawyers atm.

Introducing myself and going to use this thread as a little prompt to get going with fixing up our house.

Its our 3rd fixer upper so we know whats needed. However, its our first fixer upper with 3 kids.

We moved in almost 3 years ago and have been living in it as a 3 bed due to the 4th room looking and feeling like a prison cell. Thats where i am right now getting going on being able to move a kid in there and get going. Thankfully I did pull my finger out enough to turn the garden into somewhere you could relax in as it was completely overgrown to the extent I had to hack my way in to even start. Luckilly done before COVID. All of the plastering / painting / chippy decoration work ill do myself but there is a long list of other stuff to do.

Repoint the whole front.
New roof
New / refurb windows.
Knock through Kitchen to dining room.
New Kitchen
New lean too (mrs calls it an orangarie) in a scandi ply style.
Decorate top to bottom.

Hope I can at last show a little progress.....

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Front and back

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Anyone know anything about whether you should extend leases when you buy a share of the freehold?

One of the leaseholders wants to extend theirs from 91 to 999 years, and has been told by a solicitor we should have done this on day 1 for tax reasons. The third leaseholder is saying it's completely pointless and a waste of (fairly hefty) solicitor fees as future mortgage lenders won't care about a short lease length if the freehold is also included. Thoughts?

(in fact more generally has anyone bought or sold a leasehold flat with ownership of the freehold attached. How did it work out?)

The guy I used isn't taking new clients at the moment. Others on here will probably have some suggestions.

Having a good solicitor who I could pick up the phone and consistently speak to made my whole process a lot easier

My old flat was with a share of the freehold and I extended it whilst living there. Fees weren't outrageous, maybe £500 a flat or something. (EDIT: £350+VAT per flat)

From what I remember mortgage lenders did care, you might have a share of the freehold but there's no guarantee that all freeholders are going to agree to an extension and that share of the freehold is usually of the whole property, not just your flat. (Although 91 years wouldn't be an issue.)

I was in a share of freehold flat for ten years (two flats in a house, me and the other flat owned the freehold). Had no problems and meant that I could do a loft conversion with minimal issues. A few extra forms to be completed on sale and purchase and responsible for the buildings insurance but that was about it.

(in fact more generally has anyone bought or sold a leasehold flat with ownership of the freehold attached. How did it work out?)

Current place is share of freehold, but the lease the flat came with was already 900+ years so no need to extend it. Overall it works well. The main burden on the freeholders is annual buildings insurance and ensuring you have a suitable fund for general maintenance works as (at least in our case) we've had to all contribute to some repointing and some other general bits. (The roof was done 10+ years ago and will last for ages as it was done really well.)

I can't imagine the solicitors fees should be heavy at all to extend an existing lease(s) if you own a share of the freehold. Worth getting a quotes to extend one, also all 3 leases, to 999 years and then no-one has to think about it ever again.

We've been quote about £500 per lease. Which maybe isn't hefty on the scale of solicitors fees but it's enough for the third freeholder to object as he views it as providing zero value.

(although he doesn't have to extend his own of course)

The third leaseholder is saying it's completely pointless and a waste of (fairly hefty) solicitor fees as future mortgage lenders won't care about a short lease length if the freehold is also included. Thoughts?

I think this depends how the freehold is distributed among the other flats. I'd have thought that if the freehold is owned a third each then two freeholders could potentially outvote teh other one and decide to charge a premium for lease extension. If the freehold is held in trust this view may be more understandable as a trust is unlikely to be a dick for no reason, but I don't think it's reasonable to say that mortgage companies won't care about a short/expired lease. Is it worth having a chat to Lease about it? It feels complex enough that that would be justified.

He's just now said it's fine for us to go ahead if we want, he just thinks it's "absolutely pointless".

Tell him to put his gaff on the market and try and sell with a 60 year lease and SOF, see how he gets on.

He might think it's pointless, buyers' solicitors and mortgage providers will alway think otherwise about anything that looks stupid / weird

Tell him to put his gaff on the market and try and sell with a 60 year lease and SOF, see how he gets on.

He might think it's pointless, buyers' solicitors and mortgage providers will alway think otherwise about anything that looks stupid / weird

^^^bang on imo. Leasehold is complex enough without an expired lease

There were enough people put off by my leasehold flat even though I forked out to extend to 170+years (not SOF so only got to add 90 years to the existing terms). Some of the other flats on my terrace (3 houses split into 6 maisonnettes) had less that 40 years left as they never extended. No idea what they were going to do as they were both owned by elderly people. Another didn't extend when I did so when we were leaving, they started looking into it and it had just crept under 80 years. Last I heard it was going to cost them £20k+ where as mine for the exact same lease but a few years earlier was £6k.

that's a beaut of a house! is this in london?