Diane – Page 140 – House Critic

Shelter

Shelter is the homelessness charity but they also give housing advice for people!
They have housing advice on Homelessness
Including: Emergency housing rights checker, Hostels, Help from the council

Eviction & repossession

Eviction of tenants, Mortgage arrears, Landlord repossession, Harassment & illegal eviction

Housing benefit

Local housing allowance, Calculations, Arrears, Discretionary payments

Paying for a home

Deposits, Mortgage arrears, Rent arrears, Debt, Benefits, Social fund payments

Finding a place to live

Emergency options, Letting agencies, Council housing, Supported housing, Buying

Renting & leasehold

Agreements, Joint tenancies, Repairs, Rights & responsibilities, Leasehold

Families & relationships

Splitting up, Domestic abuse, Living with parents, When someone dies, Pregnancy

Nothing personal about this particular venture but the phrase “affordable housing” gets my goat!
Plan revived for 269 new homes on edge of Sherborne.
There’s a line in the article that I felt was worth showing you.

Some of the housing will be affordable. This does put the spin on it that, indeed some will be affordable and some will be unaffordable!
Would you like to buy an unaffordable house?
Whilst talk of huge financial turmoil still over inflated debts caused by house price inflation and insane lending, it does strike me as particular silly that this one phrase is still used.
All housing needs to be affordable to the masses! Council waiting lists are packed with people desperate for somewhere to live, yet still developers will be allowed to build unaffordable housing.

Looking up house prices

Want to know how much a house went for? After a few weeks or months it should appear on the land registry figures and every month they’re put out on several websites.
The one I like using best is called House Prices – you can search by street name and town, or by postcode, or part postcode. You can change the number of properties displayed too!
It’s a useful site for tracking down postcodes too!

Picking a surveyor

About surveys and picking a surveyor.

If you want to have a survey done on a house then you can ring round and get several quotes. Ask about the different types of surveys and see how helpful they are at answering your questions. Tell them about the property and see whether they recommend a specific type of survey.

You can ask local estate agents for recommendations of surveyors, or pick from the yellow pages. As long as you get several quotes you should have a good idea of the prices and costs.

Some surveyors are happy to discuss their findings with you over the phone if you have any questions when you receive the completed survey.

Often a survey will recommend further inspection by specialists. This can cover damp and timber experts, electrical surveyors, heating engineers, structural engineers, drainage experts or other experts. After reading a few you’d get a feel for the sort of things that will be mentioned in surveys – generally they like to cover their own backs and get you to take more detailed advice on almost everything!

If they suspect asbestos then they will recommend you get a specialist in to look at it. If it’s undisturbed then it doesn’t really need looking at, and the only way to test for asbestos is to disturb it and remove a sample.

Don’t confuse a survey with the mortgage provider’s valuation.

The homebuyers’ survey costs under £400 and covers most basic things. This is suitable for properties that aren’t too old or quirky.

A full structural survey is much more detailed but costs more.

You can ask your surveyor if you can come with him when he does the survey. Some may refuse, but if you do go along you’ll be able to ask specific questions about particular things. If you can’t go, then ask him to look at anything that’s concerning you such as extensions, or the attic.

If the survey comes back full of scary stuff then ask the surveyor about it. To get quotes for work ask several reputable builders or specialists to visit and give the quotes to you. You can negotiate with the buyer about them doing the work before you move in, or ask for a price reduction when buying it.

If the owners refuse to reduce the price, then you have to weigh up whether you want to take the loss of paying them their full asking price for the property as well as doing the remedial work and having the hassle of living on a building site. Sometimes it’s best to walk away having only wasted your survey costs.

A surveyor might give you useful information about the house and you can ask them about any aspects. Some will also have an idea about extensions, so if you’re buying a property with a view to extending it in the future they may give you advice about that.

Pick the survey that not only offers you a good price but is approachable and helpful.

Tony McCoy selling his house

Tony McCoy, BBC Sports Personality of the Year, is selling his house. It’s listed on Rightmove here – Beautifully refurbished and extended country house in ‘The Valley of the Racehorse.’

You can see bits of it on this interview with him at the BBC
It’s a big house set in 40 acres with beautiful gardens. It’s in Berkshire and is for sale at £2.5M

Finding your local estate agents

Finding local estate agents

Keep an eye out for ‘For Sale’ signs in your area. Make a note when you see one you don’t recognise so you can get in touch with the agent.

You can use sites like Rightmove or Globrix to look up areas and work out who all the different estate agents are in an area. You should take note though, not all estate agents are on Rightmove all the time. Some never go on it, and some seem to come and go.

Watch out in the local press too for advert pages from local estate agents. Some prefer advertising in the paper. However, I believe all the good ones use Rightmove as it’s such a popular property website.

Sometimes it pays to look at different estate agent websites though as they list the properties there first. It’s also useful to stay in touch with local estate agents so that when something comes up that you’re interested in they’ll get in touch! Make sure that your contact details are up to date and when you’ve bought somewhere, or just stopped looking, you let them know!

Ask people you know which estate agents they have used in the past – this can be quite revealing sometimes and you’ll discover which estate agents have a good reputation locally. Buying a house will mean may have to contact any one of the estate agents – you never know who someone will put their house for sale with. Some you might find troublesome for getting viewings of properties with, persistence is often the key to getting to see houses.

Give estate agents your contact details, plus information on the type of property you want to buy and an idea of your budget. The good estate agents will keep you informed when new properties come on the market.

Emma’s house in Portugal

This is a great website – Emma bought a house and rennovated it in Portugal! Her blog is fascinating, showing not only the work she’s done on her house, but also some of the lifestyle you get when you live in Portugal! For anyone who’s ever wondered what it’d be like to buy and do up a house abroad it’s a great read!

Visit Emma’s House in Portugal Blog

There’s some information about lime in building too which is interesting if you’re interested in exploring old techniques! Well worth bookmarking and enjoying the masses of photos as well as words!

Rightmove one of most popular websites

Rightmove is up there in the top 10 list of most popular websites, based on page impressions in the UK last week, they were the 8th largest website in the UK!

(see this on their facebook page)

Rightmove featuring in this list indicates to me that it’s the main house selling and renting website in the UK! So if you’re looking to sell your house you should ensure your estate agent advertises through it!

It also means perhaps that a lot of people spend time browsing it for fun as well as serious house hunting! Whilst it’s not in the same league as Facebook which has 26% of all page impressions, it’s still pretty impressive for any website to be listed there!

Why financial help for FTB hinders

The Isle of Man has asked for extra funds for a scheme that helps first time buyers get a home. It offers financial support.
This is the wrong thing to be doing to help first time buyers. It continues the high house prices that make the houses unaffordable in the first place!
The scheme is asking for £2.8M to help 120 people buy homes.
That means each person is being helped to the tune of £23333.33
Surely if First time buyers need that sort of help then it just means that housing is too expensive!
If FTB are the lifeblood of the housing market then without them prices might fall to affordable levels.
The only people who benefit from this are the house builders who must be laughing all the way to the bank being able to continue to charge more than people can afford.

It’s a shocking scheme in my opinion that should be scrapped. When first time buyers can not afford to buy a house it means they are too expensive!
Whilst this scheme continues the prices will not get more affordable!

Author: Diane