Category: General

Rules for viewing houses

Worth a read on the Find a property blog – The list was issued by the owners of a home that was recently sold by an unnamed Strutt & Parker branch in the South East of the country. The agents were told by the owners that their services would not be needed for viewings but to simply hand out the following list all prospective buyers

Source: The new rules to viewing a house: “Be on time, we are not a creche, speak English, please” http://blog.findaproperty.com/buying-selling/new-rules-viewing-house/#ixzz1qteJnp7b
From the FindaProperty.com blog

Noisy neighbours

How do you tell if your neighbours will be noisy?

You can ask the vendor – but there are sometimes reasons why they might not tell you what you want to know. If they’re hard of hearing they might not notice that teenagers next door have the music on all the time. You can ask via a solicitor if there’s a problem with noise from the neighbours and as long as they get a written response to that you should know. If they lie then you might have a case against them.

The surest way is by your own observation.

Walk past a few times. Not in a stalkerish sort of way but discovering the neighbourhood sort of way. A hot sunny weekend is when you’re likely to see if the neighours are out on the fronts being noisy.

View the house when the neighbours are home. Canny sellers might only let you view when they neighbours are out. But a weekday evening should get you an idea of what noise you can hear from next door.

What noise should you expect to hear?

In an ideal world none, but the world isn’t perfect. If you can hear the neighbours chatting (Or shouting and screaming) or hear their microwave ping then the house needs some soundproofing to save the sanity of the residents.

Of course if you’re a huge noisy family then you won’t care what the neighbours are like!

Beckingham Palace up for sale

But now the Beckhams have decided to make it more permanent and are to put their famous English residence Beckingham Palace up for sale.

David and Victoria are having their Hertfordshire mansion, believed to be worth around £18million, valued by estate agents.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2119709/David-Victoria-Beckham-sell-Beckingham-Palace.html#ixzz1q7JbFOXo

Is this news?
In Sept 2010 it was also up for sale.

So really it’s a story of them having had their house on the market for 2 years.

Can’t see it on rightmove.

Maybe they need Phil Spencer to be their secret agent?

Budget 2012 Stamp Duty

Stamp duty – Land duty stamp tax on all £2million homes will be raised to 7 per cent from 5 per cent. Stamp duty on £2million-plus homes bought into a company, which is a way many wealthy people avoid stamp duty, will attract a punitive 15 per cent tax rate.

Read more: http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2118109/BUDGET-2012-SUMMARY-Key-points-glance.html#ixzz1plIGS0zd

This is fantastic news. Not perhaps for people who wanted stamp duty holidays again at the lower end of the market, but for the government to get a grip of the stamp duty avoidance that goes on.
Why have they picked £2m?
I think that’s the average price of a house in Chelsea. Have a look at some Chelsea housing stats.