Owning your own home

£2000 for two decent sized stacks, pots off, get back to stone or brick, recap nicely, point everything properly inc making access (either lift or temp scaff) is probably about right TBH.

But if scaff is already there, and they aren't top notch roofers, then way over priced. There are VERY few good roofers in this country, especially mad considering it rains a lot.

Also if its stone, make sure they use the right products. Usually still strong cement mix for the cap, but pointing needs to be something breathable and much much weaker mix. From where I'm sitting right now I can see various neighbouring buildings where they have used cap mix for 'a bit of pointing while i'm up here'.

EA fee could be 1.5 - 2% on the cheap end, a lot more if you go Foxtons. For conveyancing, we're using MyHomeMove, our person is really good but other people online seem to have a mixed experience with them. We're selling a flat and buying a house at 290k and we're paying a touch under £6k including £4.5k stamp duty. Most quotes we found were around £2k so this is actually cheaper than most.

A couple of years ago I paid about £2k for conveyancing and probably about another £500 for searches and various other fees for selling a flat (share of freehold) and buying a house.

Same £2,500 ish.

Interesting, ta. Yeah scaffold is up - to be fair they've said "usually 1.2k a stack but we could do a deal", but not sure what that means.

Doubt they're the finest out there, it smells of weed when they're up there most of the time and they have dropped stuff all over our garden

Roofers are messy cunts from my experience.

Meant in the nicest possible way

I used to play rugby with a 19st Tongan roofer. Amazing athlete, not sure I would have wanted him tip toeing all over my purlins though. I suppose if he built or worked on your roof and it survived, that would be a good sign.

But yes, I had to buy a drain snake for my pressure washer to clear the drain under my downpipe after our roof work, which was seemingly used as their rubbish chute.

I think they just expect the home owner to protect anything they could fuck up. Windows / drains / brickwork, window cills, garden...the list is long. By the end, my urge to punch was strong, but so was the urge to self preservate...

Which is fine but they aren't on my house - they're on the next door neighbour's, while I've been away. I don't expect them to bombard us with shit just for being unlucky enough to be next door

Chat to you neighbour, get them to tidy up. The roofers sure as hell won't do it.

After trying and failing to exchange for 3 days, one solicitor in the chain is now proposing we exchange & complete on the same day on Friday. I think this is unworkable anyway from a removals perspective, but it also feels sketchy as fuck given the complete shitshow of communication over the past few days. FML etc etc

We exchanged and completed same day, seemed fine. Didn’t have removal logistics though as we were coming from a rental with a couple weeks overlap.

Thanks, assuming we can sort the removals, the solicitor up the chain has already promised and failed to exchange on 3 days, so how can I trust them to be able to do it when it really matters? Aaarrghhh

Cheers buddy. Any pics in situ?

We got ours from https://www.colourflooring.co.uk/collections/cork-flooring (went with ‘Amizade’).

Artificial light makes the photos look a bit rank colour-wise, but we’re very happy with it so far.

2 Attachments

My partner and I have seen countless places over the last few months and have been outbid on several at best and final ie offering 351 on a 325k and still being outbid. We are looking outside of London (Cornwall) and the market is crazily inflated and there are so many cash buyers or people looking to make a quick buck on Airbnb. We saw a place recently which we thought was underpriced at 245 but really nice nonetheless so put a best and final in at 301 (we were up against a number of cash buyers etc and another ten offers). We found out last night that our offer was accepted but we are now freaking out that we’ve made some colossal rookie error (we’re both first time buyers) and are (laughably…? naively…?) wondering if there’s any scope for a straight conversation with the EA or vendor prior to any surveying about whether we could revise our offer. The lack of transparency and layers of obfuscation in the process are horrible. Absolute noob at all of this obviously

Ohhhh that looks great tbh. Samples ordered!

Your offer is just an offer, nothing is binding. You can withdraw or revise your offer at any point up until exchange of contracts. Flip side is obviously the same applies to the vendor.

My advice is look at your sums very carefully to see what you can afford, then try and be as dispassionate as possible about the property. If you wish to revise your offer downwards, in my personal view if you can link it to issues with the property then a better chance of success. E.g. "needs new windows, we're dropping the offer by £10k". You could also allude to the expectation that the market is about to slow down.

At the end of the day no-one has a crystal ball, it's all a gamble to a certain extent so you need to be happy with your position. Good luck

Also, you don’t mention how much deposit you have available, but be aware that if you’re buying with a mortgage and the bank values the property less than your offer then you’ll need to have the cash to make up the difference.

Found some nice* ligne roset sofàs second hand, a bargain at 200eue.

Thanks for the suggestion.

*Buyers opinion

A great piece of advice I got on here (can’t remember who said it) was that this stage, bidding etc is purely about securing the house, so you can work out the final price later.

I think a cautious congratulations is in order though, Cornwall!

if there’s any scope for a straight conversation with the EA or vendor prior to any surveying about whether we could revise our offer

No.

That is

until you find something horribly wrong with it that would justify it,

or

you can't get a mortgage on it because the bank thinks it's overvalued.

If at this point you think you can't go through with it, your most honest option is to withdraw your offer. That way the seller can proceed with one of the other offers on the table.

The two big questions are do you think you can afford it and do you think it's worth that much? If it's yes to both then I wouldn't worry (too much) about it.

If you go back to the vendor and say actually we want to drop the price it's going to make them fairly nervous about how serious you are and whether you can really afford it (and you don't know how close your offer is to others). You can try it but it may end badly.

Similarly, I wouldn't try the "needs new windows, we're dropping the offer by £10k" or similar. Surely you would have known that when you made the offer so you're just going to look dodgy. If it's something coming up on a survey that you couldn't have known then that's a different ballgame.

Obviously if you're not that fussed about wanting it you can try haggling on the price but it's all a risk.

If you go back to the vendor and say actually we want to drop the price it's going to make them fairly nervous about how serious you are and whether you can really afford it

More than fairly nervous I'd say. If someone did that to me and I had other (similar) offers on the table I'd tell them to do one.

Thanks all for the advice and opinions. Really appreciated. We had a conversation with the EA this morning which made us feel much less anxious about things. The vendors are apparently very happy with us taking as buyers (as opposed to Airbnb or cash buyers) and are well aware that depending on mortgage valuation our initial offer might be less. EA seems pretty decent (apart from his terrible shoes) compared to some of the slime balls we’ve dealt with so far so we’re feeling alright. Still, it’s a long way between here and completion. Apparently from 16 viewings there were 10 offers (all over asking), 7 of which were cash