Owning your own home

the other ones click and clunk as they heat up and down, which is basically constant during the hours of use, no good if your a light sleeper

I wouldn’t have one in the bedroom as the fan might wake a light sleeper but the small amount of heat given off on an overnight charge will keep the chill off if you program it to come on at waking time but that kind of defeats the object of having a warm room to wake up to.
I just fitted an oil filled rad with a timer (and a setting to turn the beep off and dim the display for bedrooms) and leave the door open to hallway with it’s storage heater.

£10+ a day?? think the highest bill i ever had was £200 a month when it was around freezing for the whole of january and -1º 0r -2º overnight.

people with gas CH have had it far too easy...

Shit

Possibly, but often you’ll pay an arrangement fee, so you might find that offsets any benefit of lower monthly payments over a short period.

Worth looking at, but quite a lot of trackers aren’t much different to SVR now.

I have a mortgage coming up for renewal in Jan, my plan is the same as @Velocio ‘s - don’t fix, see what happens. As property sales slow and the base rate stabilises mortgage companies should get more confident and more competitive so I reckon rates will drop.

Maybe.

You can put something in place to start from March which will be valid, or could be depending on the clauses, for 120 days. With no requirement to purchase this product.
February : "Hi my mortgage runs out in March, what can I switch to?"
"this rate and it's available for 120 days"
100 days later : "thanks, i'll take it because the world is burning"

Now that’s solid advice right there. Nice.

in the process of sorting out the sale of our flat (leasehold) and our generally benign freeholders are now pulling out all the stops to be pricks. Just pulled in some sort of heavyweight lawyer to tell our solicitors that they won't provide any further information in order to complete the management pack. Which they are legally obliged to do. lol can't wait to lose the sale over this in a month. has already been two months of waiting for this management pack.

Just pulled in some sort of heavyweight lawyer to tell our solicitors that they won't provide any further information in order to complete the management pack. Which they are legally obliged to do

I've taken legal advice on this in the past and that advice was that the freeholder is NOT legally obliged to provide the management pack, even if it is a legal requirement for you as a seller to sell the damn place.

If you get anywhere with your lawyer, please update, would be good to know if the advice I got was bullshit.

My wife just read something to this effect actually. Wild if true. They've sent over the LPE1 and 2 forms, whatever they are, but have neglected to sign and date them for some reason, rendering them useless. Chasing the signatures is what prompted a call from the new person from an external LLP rather than their general counsel.

Out of interest, why won’t they provide it? What’s their motivation??

The parent company has only recently bought the place, and perhaps didnt do any due diligence over the freehold responsibilities. There's been a couple of cagey hold ups along the way surrounding the buildings insurance. Its speculation but I wouldnt be surprised if the fund for the two flats they have the freehold for (us and upstairs) has been paying for the buildings insurance entirely, rather than 2/3 share.

buildings insurance

If this is the issue you may be in luck because you do have specific rights for information about insurance (except getting them to disclose kickbacks). Perhaps raise specific insurance queries as well?

Mmmm I've asked our solicitors, along with whether the phone call they received offered any indication as to why they don't want to sign the paperwork and also why they would instruct external counsel suddenly. Even if theyre on retainer (the bloke is a real estate partner at his firm) it doesnt make much sense to me

Unless theyre hiding something, obviously

Your solicitor will be asking for a few years of accounts and proof of sinking fund etc. Could be their books aren't up to scratch.

the accounting is pretty basic, but v few transactions and we get them every year and I always go through them (which is how I found out they tried to charge us for the same 12 month period of buildings insurance twice) so I'm hoping nothings crept out of that. New owners won't have even had a hand in that part yet tbh, I'm hoping its just them not wanting to sign something they dont know anything about

You haz PM.

More insurance cagey-ness, apparently as its a multi-cover policy theyre refusing to disclose it as it includes details of other properties they are responsible for. I guess its a new policy since the takeover, which would at least mean we've not yet paid anything for it and so my earlier speculation cannot be true.

The request to sign and date the forms theyve already sent over has been refused again, on grounds of 'not obliged to do so'. This is going to be really fun.

Not to hog this thread, but we’ve been going back through our correspondence with our freeholder. When new owners bought into the business we were informed, but told specifically that it didn’t affect the freehold. Currently it is being demonstrated quite plainly that their involvement does affect our freehold.

Does anyone know if there’s a requirement for leaseholders to be notified of a change of freeholder? Google fu is failing currently

Does anyone know if there’s a requirement for leaseholders to be notified of a change of freeholder?

What are you hoping to achieve? You must have been notified of the change of freeholder - otherwise how are you corresponding with them. I am not sure a "foot fault" on when or how they told you will get you anything - what are your damages?

It’s a case of the buck being passed until it’s become clear that new owners hold all the power and the business (that we thought they only hold a share of) cannot perform the freeholder requirements. So we’ve never been notified, it’s just a case of who is now answering inquiries.
If it turns out that the original freeholder is actually still our freeholder then maybe they’ll fill out the forms and we can sell the flat.
If they’ve done something wrong, then I don’t know really. We still wouldn’t have known they’d behave like this.

So we’ve never been notified, it’s just a case of who is now answering inquiries.

But I assume they haven't denied being the freeholder? At some point this starts to look like an absent freeholder situation, which itself doesn't have easy solutions.

If you are eligible and you have enough time you may want to start an RTM process. An "accidental" freeholder might welcome a professional management co (paid for by leaseholders).

That’s a good point, thanks. Especially since I’ve been the one to arrange any repairs etc anyway. I think it gets tricky as it’s one freehold, so they don’t own ours so much as own it. worth exploring though

Does anyone know if there’s a requirement for leaseholders to be notified of a change of freeholder?

If the freehold goes up for sale leaseholders should be given first right of refusal. https://www.lease-advice.org/advice-guide/right-first-refusal/

Not sure if this is that kind of situatoin.

Juicy bit of local gossip

Our neighbours, built a big rear extension, a side extension, paved over a piece of land in front and to the side of their house to make a private drive and painted their house that awful grey (which matches their car).

They've done it all without planning permission; the council has so far rejected all their plans and put a notice on the house that if it's ever sold it all has to be demolished.

Also, they stole the land for the drive and side extension AND fly tipped all the rubbish in the forest!

if it's ever sold it all has to be demolished

i thought councils could fine/order demoliton/come in rip shit down? seems a weak intervention from them