Owning your own home

so, london is destined to become the playground of multinational millionaires, with all indigenous worker bees hived off to the medway towns / new towns / midlands sleeper colonies..

glad i moved out when i did

63%

Maybe you got a bargain and actually prices have only risen 31.8%, or maybe you overpaid and they've actually risen 144%. Maybe your house wouldn't sell for what you think it would, maybe a bit more, or maybe a bit less.

An assertion of a precise rise based on a sample group of 1 with no actual data, is 101% silly.

My always says

It is only worth X if someone else is willing to pay for it.

You've neither made a profit or a loss until it's sold.

I was on a work course in Bristol this week, with people from all over the country. Someone asked what a nice 2/3-bed house would be in a decent part of Hackney. They thought I was taking the piss when I guesstimated £800-900k.

Zoopla is actually the best source for this as it's based on Land Registry data, which is what you want.

I'm prob late to the party here and might of missed the whole point but...

Have you ever missed a rent payment?
Are you ever going to live somewhere rent free?

If it's a big NO to both of them then buy buy buy!

Anyone know anything about electricity? I nicked a cable in a wall about a year ago, it wasn't that stressful but just caused the rcd to trip every so often. I was drilling to mount a towel rail, so I just mounted it anyway, ignoring the hole that I'd drilled; Barney (brother of @mashton) reckoned this would be fine.

I've removed the rail, thus exposing the hole again and the rcd has begun tripping again (like a couple of times a day). I'm 99% sure that it must be that hole that's the cause, as nothing else in the house has changed. Anyone know what I can do short of pulling bits of wall / tiles out to fix it? I was wondering if filling the hole with something (for example a bit of wood dowel, or some filler) might work / be safe.

No and no; we are going through ..contracts will be signed next week most likely ..

BR1 4lyf soon

Drop my bro a line, he is now permanently in London and would be happy to chat.

How are house prices even worked out?

In my situation, mine and my gf's flat had no comparable sales in the last 4 years in the immediate vicinity. In fact the last recorded similar property was when my gf bought the flat 4 years previous.

So what happened was a bunch of estate agents came round and valued the flat at around 400k (double what she paid 4 years ago), we took that to the bank who were happy with the valuation.

Where did they come up with that figure though? It feels like in this situation they literally could have come up with any number, and as long as the bank agreed then it's set in stone. If they'd valued it at 500k, what would the bank have checked to say whether it was too high?

I did my own spread sheet where I got the % difference between ex-council and new builds and ex-council and converted houses in a different, but similar areas, in my case H&I and Canonbury, and then applied the same % difference to new builds and converted houses in Dalston and Stoke Newington.

I also looked at how much ex-council sold for in H&I estates, then found recent sales in H&I and Dalston of comparable properties, looked at the % difference in comparable properties and then applied that % to the ex-councils sold in H&I to see what figures I got.

Using the two different methods I actually got a value of around 425k, so if what I did is even mildly applicable, we got a little bit of a bargain, but who is to say what I did is even sensible, or what Estate Agencies do??

That's basically it - look at comparable sales and a rough % increase over time and make a guess. For open market sales the market sorts out the true value, otherwise the methods you describe above are as good as it gets.

The fact that you and all three agents were within 6% shows it's quite easy to be fairly accurate.

Thanks - I'll do that. I'll imagine I'll get him round at some point to sort it more permanently, just want to make sure I won't be burning the house down in the meantime.

4lyf

Fingers crossed, and congratulations.

Sounds like you have leakage / have caused a slight short circuit. This is not good. It could deteriorate and start to heat and potentially scorch. Best thing would have been to repair the cable at the time.

You're right, would have been nice to fix it, but it would require removing tiles right behind the worktops, so I was hoping to not have to.
I had a guy come round with some testing tools and he decided that it was ok - I guess he was testing for what you describe. Deterioration sounds bad - I think I'll hit Barney up.
It's a bit annoying, there really shouldn't have been a wire there. The previous owner used some massively cowboy builders - we think it was left from the previous kitchen that they replaced it and didn't bother shifting the wiring to a sensible route.

Exchanged, I bought a house! argh!!!!

congrats mands! :D

Brrrrraaaapppp!

woop woop!!

Exciting! Congratulations :D

Got your insurance sorted? Otherwise all you've done is taken on a giant liability to the bank :)

Solicitors. Pull your fucking finger out. If you leave the local authority to reply in their own sweet time this will run and run. I have told you that both the vendor and I could theoretically exchange at any time so it is in your interest to get a fucking move on if you want to recognise any revenue from this work.

if you want to recognise any revenue from this work.

Are you sure they don't still charge even if it doesn't go through? Most still charge for what they've done.

Well, we've hit a road block. The details for the lease extension have come through and the ground rent escalates dramatically every few years.
Solicitor says the vendor can go down the statutory (as apposed to voluntary) extension route but that takes months and might cost all the money.

He's going to put it forward to them that this is ridiculous and try and get an agreement dawn up so it can go through after we've exchanged but right now its looking like we're going to have to walk.

In the meantime, prices have gone up to the point where we can no longer afford pretty much anything.