Owning your own home

they use the bcis calculator based upon the age and particulars of the building. 'a victorian two-up with XX bedrooms...' will usually be enough

So i would like to have homebuyers survey performed just to make sure.

Any suggestions?

I would like to make sure they have building insurance and possibly a RICS surveyor

I used this guy recently - extremely helpful, bent over backwards to get the survey in on the few dates that were free, and even sorted access to the flat roof without a cherry picker. Would recommend

Kevin Hurley kevin@khasurveyors.co.uk

Most insurers ain't that fussed. Victorian or 1800s or similar would suffice. I don't think mine even asked.

Mortgage application finally submitted and valuation booked!

FFS. Our solicitor has been chasing their solicitor for a copy of the upstairs neighbours lease as our states we are responsible for a fair share of the maintenance of the roof so we need to confirm that upstairs are similarly responsible for the foundations as it doesn't make mention of that in our lease (two storey house converted in the 40s into two maisonettes). The other solicitor requested this from land registry, got it today and sent it over. It's the wrong fucking thing. Our solicitor has now asked for a suitable indemnity policy to cover the defect. It's the last piece of the very annoying puzzle.

Wait what, that is clearly a Victorian house, it's obviously going to be there pre-1911 or did I miss something?

My reasoning isn't as advanced as BQ's but I looked at it and would have guessed 1850-70.

Quite a lot of Edwardian houses were built in a style virtually identical to Victorian builds. Ours looks Victorian (and was built in a kind of extension of Victorian affordable housing developments) but is actually 1915. I suspect that a lot of housing developments of the early 20th century basically just took Victorian designs and construction methods (you can see the bricks in my house which were fired in a field shoe instead of a kiln) and replicated them. It took a while for Bauhaus design to filter into UK worker housing.

Any good carpenter/ handyman recommendations?

NEEDED URGENTLY - Painter and decorator, Finsbury Park/Seven Sisters Road area. Needed for mrs_com's work.

Any recommendations?

Where? Good tradesmen tend to keep it local, I could recommend people but I don't think you're in Hackney so not much use.

Yeah- nw8 sadly. But mainly want the handyman/carpenter to help with integrated fridge realignment and then help me redesign the (only storage) cupboard into a better bike storage system.
need to find an electrician too...

Electrician - Clive 07904 188645 been using him for all the electrical jobs in the flat for the last few years, always comes on time, fast and clean etc, he even showed me how to fix something urgent yet easy over the phone and agreed to come out for free if I couldn't get it right. Higher recommend.

Builder / carpenter - Gary 07548 278881 he did my bathroom floor and fixed a part of my wall, totally ignored his then boss instruction because they wanted to cut corners (putting tiles directly onto floor boards etc), took him an extra day to level the floor and did a really good job, no extra cost than quote. A bit hard to get hold of as I think he is now a one man compnay, but does do neat and tidy jobs. Was going to install my cat flap for me for free, but never got round taking up the offer.

I am pretty sure Clive works all over London, but I am not sure which area Gary covers.

We totally need a forum list of approved tradesmen/tradeswomen.

.

Cheers @ExTra. Will ring. H

We totally need a forum list of approved tradesmen/tradeswomen.

yes! this please!

Will it be more difficult for me to get a mortgage being
self-empoyled? Want to start looking around and putting feelers out to buy a flat.

I get them impression it depends on how your accounts/contracts look. There are specialist brokers for the self employed.

Yeah this.

I've got a decent plumber for SE London.

I did it for my first mortgage, it was a harder process with more documentation needed. I wouldn't have been able to do it with out a specialist broker

We used C&F Mortgages to get a mortgage with Clydesdale. Their url redirects now: http://www.c&fmortgages.com .

I can't say they were particularly efficient but they had contacts at banks and knew what to do. Our deal was about 0.5% above the best rate available.

Cheers for the heads up. Much appreciated, Will start looking into it.

contractmortgagesuk.com seems to be pretty good to me so far.

@ChainBreaker How's all yours going buddy? PM me the place, still looking at Grove Park area?