Category: General

Should councils interfere in the housing market?

This story on the BBC news site says Conwy Council is planning to run a scheme to ‘help first time buyers’.

I don’t think it does help first time buyers at all. It helps people selling houses.

Mr Hughes said the council will be taking steps to keep the risk to a minimum and the maximum value of the property to qualify would be £140,000.
If the buyer defaulted on the mortgage, the council would have to pay back the part of the loan it had guaranteed.

This means the scheme needs to have ultra good vetting on mortgage applicants. And if you can afford to buy a house then do you really need the council’s help?

The council will also need to be open and honest about who buys houses with this scheme so it can be clean of any favouritism.

Of course if this scheme is propping up house prices then it is not helping first time buyers at all.

If no one is buying houses then prices will have to come down. As soon as they have come down enough people will be able to save up their own deposits. Lower prices would also mean mortgage affordability was better, less risk of defaults and less debt! With less money being spent on housing costs it’s easy to see that people will have more money for other things.

Ruling on unmarried couples’ property rights

Court ruling ounmarried couples’ property rights

During a hearing in May, the Supreme Court heard that ice-cream salesman Mr Kernott, 51, and Ms Jones, 56, broke up in 1993 after sharing the house in Thundersley for eight years.

The couple bought the house in 1985 in joint names and took out a joint mortgage. It was valued at £240,000 in 2008.

When Mr Kernott moved out, Ms Jones continued to pay the mortgage.

interesting bit of kit to help you find cold spots in your home

The Black & Decker TLD100 Thermal Leak Detector is a great gadget for anyone interested in draft proofing their home and ensuring it’s as warm as possible. As heating bills go up and up – with new rises on the cards for many customers in January too, you’ll find saving money by insulating is more and more popular.

Whilst this gadget isn’t really cheap it’s not horrificly expensive. Maybe if you clubbed together with neighbours or even family you could buy it, and all use it to find cold spots in your home.

It’s available at Amazon UK – Black & Decker TLD100 Thermal Leak Detector
and if you buy today will be with you in a couple of days helping you track down places to top up insulation.

This gadget helps you identify issues with the insulation in your home and you just point it at the walls, floors or doors and watch the light change. It’ll go red if the temperature increases – so when it goes over lights that are on it’ll go red. When it finds a cold spot it’ll go blue. You can see the light clearly so you can move it along all the floor edges, doors and window seals to check them out. It’ll help you track down drafts, cold spots and all those places where heat escapes from your home.
If you can cut down on the amount of heat that escapes your house will stay warmer and your heating bills will be less!
It will indentify both hot and cold drafts around your home.

It just needs one 9-volt battery.

This is a tool you will use around your entire home to improve the insulation and draft proofing. If you want to save money on energy bills then this gadget will help you.



There’s another video of this being used I think is well worth looking at. The lady making the video looks at the gap around the door, the bottom of the door and the walls and the window in her kitchen. Whilst she sees to her suprise the blind keeps up the temperature she’s spotted a cold spot on her wall in the top corner which might be due to a bit of cavity wall insulation being missing.

This is something I have asked many times – how do you know the cavity wall insulation is installed properly without viewing with a heat camera? You don’t! And perhaps there’s a need for this being checked in most houses. You can under the guarantee ask them to come back and have a look but they would probably just pump some more in rather than checking whether there are gaps as the only tool to do this is an IR camera.

Stopgap for gaps in floorboards

Stopping up drafts in floorboards has been done in a numbver of ways over the years. Some people make paper mache with newspaper and squeeze it into the cracks. Some use sawdust and glue to give a good colour match.

Now there’s Stopgap – something invented just for filling gaps in floorboards. You just put it in and push it down and it forms an invisible barrier.

Find out more about them and how to fit stopgaps at their website

loft heat pump

Another new one on me – the loft heat pump takes heat from the loft and does something useful with it.
They will be noisy though, may require sitting on firm foundations and be a bit tricky to get into the roof space.

Whilst looking up info on this I discovered this site which looks at case studies.
In particular I thought the solar hot water report was interesting – that people don’t always use the free hot water that the systems make and so as with all eco systems it’s worth considering whether it’s right for you.

Grand Designs is running a campaign about The Great British Refurb – This campaign can help you live in a low energy home that is cheaper to run, more comfortable to live in and massively reduces your carbon emissions.

Cavity wall ties

Building surveys often report that cavity wall ties may be corroded. Of course the only way of finding out for sure is having a look. If you have a camera on a stick you could drill a hole and investigate.

You could of course ask for quotes from cavity wall tie firms, but these have a vested interest in selling their service. Costs vary.

There is an alternative apparently – something I’ve not heard of before:

The alternative is to inject polyurethane foam into the cavity. This glues the two walls together avoiding the need to replace the wall ties.

The polyurethane foam then also insulates the cavity and is supposed to be twice as good as blown mineral wool fibre or polystyrene bead. Polyurethane is also impervious to water so won’t be affected by flooding or water ingress.

Isothane Technitherm and BASF WallTite are tow companies which offer this service. Have never heard of this before though – have you had cavity wall ties replaced or new ones put in or tried this new system?

Ivy leaf house

ivy leafl houseIvy leaf house has a rain water system in place. It’s a 4 bedroom detached house for sale at Offers in Excess of £450,000
It’s on Ivyleaf Hill, Bude
Whilst this isn’t the massive luxury home I normally show I thought this one has so much potential. It’s not far from the coast at Bude and has big gardens and plenty of stuff to keep you busy! Plenty of outdoor space and workshops too.

It’s a detached semi-rural cottage
Open plan kitchen, dining room and lounge with open fireplace
Some slate floors
Oil fired heating
Attached annexe with own entrance
Large detached workshop and office benefiting from industrial planning consent
Additional garage/workshop
Static caravan
Rainwater system in place helping to reduce water costs