Owning your own home

You're clearly not converted.

Screams 'holiday let' quite a bit.

Winter heating bill £10M

Our first house was a tiny cottage in the midlands that had a former methodist chapel attached that we converted and had a mezzanine bedroom - similar to that but on a very much smaller scale. Had a wood burner for the chapel part that took a while to heat the room as it was double height, but then the bedroom was boiling.
Rest of the heating was a coal-fired rayburn that needed feeding from the coal pile outside every morning. Quite a relief to move back to London's famous London and proper heating.

Well this is fun, just got a letter from the freeholder saying they've started a section 5a proposal to sell on the freehold. They've priced the freehold at ~60% the value of the flat meaning 1) it's too expensive to buy and 2) even if it we did buy it the flat may never rise in value enough to match the total cost before the heat death of the universe. So now we've got to worry about a service charge that's gone up 50% in 2 years for no apparent reason, a main boiler that we've been paying for maintenance on but turns out has been defective for 3 years, a whole new heating system being put in the building with roughly 4 more months left of work, and now an unknown buyer may tripple the ground rent and tank the value of the flat just as we want to sell it.

Ah that is shit sumo. Leaseholds are a living nightmare.

Isn't there legislation to force freeholders to sell to residents at an affordable rate?

an unknown buyer may tripple the ground rent

This isn’t possible, I don’t think?

The GR is fixed during the lease term and you have the right to extend the lease w/ peppercorn ground rent subject to various bits of lawyering.

Collective enfranchisement (but there are situations where you don’t have that right)

They've set it at 240k or the sum of the ground rents x 24, whichever is lower. I think there's 55 flats so I think they've worked them out to be the same £. No idea why it's 24 x the ground rent.

Yeah we need to dig out the original contract, it's girlfriend's flat so she signed the papers. I've been searching about legal limits and I couldn't find anything definitive. Do you know if someone buy's the freehold will they have to continue with the same lease agreement or will they be able to negotiate a new one?

Been quoted 1500 for some maintenance on my mid terrace roof

Repointing some areas
Replace zinc ridging and straps on the extension
Repair window ingle (looks like the masonry has crumbled in the corner)
Clear gutters
Remove old aerial from chimney

It sounds reasonable to me but just wanted check with folk here if that sounds decent enough or not

Is scaffolding required? If so, is that included?

Is it @ReekBlefs who knows all about this?

Get super organised with all your info in order then try and speak to CAB.

No, ladders only

So depending on how many leaseholders you can get involved it could be a fairly reasonable sum each. Expect it to take a long time to get ducks in a row and paperwork settled.

Your lease doesn’t change at all if there’s a new freeholder.

We are going to move and replace an old radiator in our bedroom. Does anyone have any recommendations for a slim (projection from wall) and ideally flat fronted radiator? Online calculator says it should be 2000ish btu but we (I) don't like a hot bedroom so I'm willing to balance output and size.

Do you know if someone buy's the freehold will they have to continue with the same lease agreement or will they be able to negotiate a new one?

The contract is the contract and unless weirdly drafted should survive the freehold changing hands.

https://www.traderadiators.com/supplies4heat-flat-panel-radiator-white-400mm-x-800mm-single-panel-single-convector

Not sure if these are our ones (link no longer works) but it's the same retailer we used.

You just need a single type 11 radiator. They are as flat as you can get. Whether a single type 11 will provide the output you need with the pipe distance you have is another matter. If its a very old rad then the size might be imperial so might not be exactly like for like.

Thanks, we are moving it to a different wall so pipe distance etc is not an issue. It's old, actually it appears to be a single type 11 without the squared off top and ends.

Ideally we don't want a ribbed front, but ones like @dbr posted seem to project much further from the wall (Internet net says 125mm) than our current one. Just thought there might be a middle ground.

Sorry to hijack the topic of new rads, but what with the price of gas I'm thinking of increasing the rad size in the most commonly used room (lounge) to use the fuel more efficiently. Currently an old (imperial sized) single pane thing which feels like it doesn't do much to the room temp- do I need to factor in anything if I want to go for a slightly bigger double pane rad?

We went with these for our first floor because we also wanted flat fronted and are happy with them so far:
https://www.heatandplumb.com/acatalog/maxheat-obla-flat-panel-radiator-ks508f

The aim was basically to get them to disappear into the wall behind as much as possible.

Very similar to the ones @dbr linked to but it's hard to know what the quality is like until they actually arrive and for some reason the photos of radiators online are always crap. These ones come in lots of different sizes which was a consideration as we'll be replacing them in the whole house (they don't just come in 500mm width, there are separate listings for each width).

My plumber confirmed that single convector is fine for upstairs rooms.

If you're going to DIY I can give you tips!

do I need to factor in anything if I want to go for a slightly bigger double pane rad?

I don't know the answer to this (do you need to consider whether your boiler is powerful enough?) but when I installed ^ those radiators ^ I didn't know that heat source pumps need bigger rads.

So when we do downstairs I am wondering the same thing - aesthetically we'd prefer smaller ones but if gas central heating is ultimately going to be done away with I don't want to have to rip up all our nice original restored floorboards to put in bigger rads...

Actually just realised the reason we went with those ones @cjr is the wall to pipe centres is 40mm minimum. I found a lot like the ones @dbr posted that stuck out a lot more than we wanted.