Buying a home and don't know how anything works

[LDC]

My place is a leasehold. I was dead set against the very idea but a solicitor looked through the lease and reassured me it’s a pretty good deal. And I loved the flat, so I went ahead and bought it. Only been here a year, so it may go bad , but so far so good.


As has been said, check out google maps, street view and satellite view too. You’re looking for green spaces and large roads.

Hone your criteria. Look at places you know aren’t perfect. Look at places in different areas. For instance, I thought I wanted to be closer to the Tube station; that was one of my hard core priorities. I looked further out and realised it wasn’t as important as I’d supposed. So I looked even further out and learned that I didn’t want to be that far out; I also learned that I didn’t want to be in a neighbourhood where everyone knew everyone around them, and that was a factor I’d not considered at all until it was a selling point for a particular property.

Look out the windows when you view the place. Look up at the sky, at the houses opposite. This will be your daily view so make sure you check it out.

Where does the sun fall? Are there rooms that get blasted with sun? Now that heatwaves are getting more common, it’s something to consider. British houses are not constructed to deal with 3 weeks of very hot weather. A fortnight of 30 degree heat in Turkey is unremarkable and the houses are built deal with the heat in mind, but U.K. houses aren’t designed for heatwaves. If you struggle with the heat (especially when sleeping) it’s something to consider. On the other hand, it’s only three weeks of the year, so..

Alternatively, there may be rooms that get no sun at all, or very little in the winter, or miss out on summer sun. That might be fine for you but again, consider what you want to use that room for and whether lack of sunlight might be an important factor for you.

The sun shifts around so much through the year at this latitude that it’s not easy to be clear about this. You can get an app that will elucidate this for you. The estate agent will neither know nor care. “South facing garden” is about their limit.

As you’re walking around, listen for creaky floorboards underfoot. Not much you can do about it but I found that it’s a good way to switch on my general receptiveness. We make this huge enormous decision based largely on gut instinct so switching on your gut instinct is important.

Ask about water pressure in the area. Will your shower be a disappointing dribble or a warm luxurious waterfall?

Nearest pint, decent takeaway, park or green space, bus stop and post office.

Look for brand new paintwork. Why have they done that, are they covering something up?

Is there any storage? If not, is there space for wardrobes, shelves etc.

When looking online, ignore the furniture, soft furnishings etc. That’s the lifestyle and you can easily replicate or avoid it. Look at the size of the rooms, the windows etc. If the curtains are closed in the photos, check on googlemaps for street view etc: what is the photographer trying to hide?

You can change the study into a sitting room or the bedroom into a dining room if you want to. Don’t be stuck in the template presented by the vendor.

Imagine coming home with shopping, from a holiday, with friends: does the space work for you?

Where will you hang your coat when you come indoors? This may seem like a small thing but everyone who has had to live with piles of coats and shoes on the bannisters or clogging up the doorway will know how badly it can impact on your home.

And my favourite bit : once you’ve found a place you like, lie awake at night and walk through the place in your imagination and live in it in the best possible way you can imagine. Go in through the front door and explore every room, in as much detail as possible. If anything seems blank or worrisome, go back and check that space or detail IRL. Do the same in the garden and the local streets.

All the legal and financial stuff can be researched and explored and discussed with friends, on here, on the web etc. The only stuff that is solely your own work is choosing the place you want, and there’s no higher authority for that than you.

That's all brilliant advice SheilaNaGig I wish I'd read that before I looked at a house!

 

[hash tag]

Yep. This happened to me - I mean just on the exact day I was to send the money to my solicitor to buy the house I got a scam email from an email address one letter different from my actual solicitors, saying here are the (scammers) bank details. They must have hacked the solicitors emails, I think. That was scary.

How does this happen, how do the scammers know how to do it and when!
There have been stories of people losing tens of thousands of pounds like this, either by scammers or sending the money to an
incorrect account because they got a single digit wrong

 

[equationgirl]

I find SheilaNaGig always has good advice.

To be fair everyone who has posted has posted something helpful, so miss direct is getting a lot of good advice from the collective hive mind.

 

[Hollis]

Another thing when you buy is shop around for home and contents insurance, and then check it every few years... I was getting massively ripped off by Halfax for years before I discovered I could get insurance online for about about 15% of what I was paying! - They tend to increase significantly above inflation each year, and then rely on you not checking.

My other tuppence is think how much maintenance you want to do, and whether you're really going to convert a property. Also are you really going to do DIY? If not allow for the extra costs when you're buying.

Another thing you could think of is borrowing some money on top of the cash you have to buy something larger. Interest rates and mortgages are ridiculously cheap at the moment, and you can lock into a low interest rate for 5-10 years.

 

[t0bytoo]

How does this happen, how do the scammers know how to do it and when!
There have been stories of people losing tens of thousands of pounds like this, either by scammers or sending the money to an
incorrect account because they got a single digit wrong

I was paranoid about getting the account details wrong so sent a ten pound payment a couple of weeks before I had to send all the money. It arrived. I slept better

 

[two sheds]

Another thing when you buy is shop around for home and contents insurance, and then check it every few years... I was getting massively ripped off by Halfax for years before I discovered I could get insurance online for about about 15% of what I was paying! - They tend to increase significantly above inflation each year, and then rely on you not checking.

This is true, but I discovered that you only discover how cheap your insurance is once you come to claim.

I had a flood where a cold water pipe split in the attic during a February freeze and deposited the contents of a small swimming pool into my house. I was abroad at the time was lucky that an urbanite (thank you Bosky) passed by and thought to turn off the water at the mains. Not something I would have thought of I have to say.

I was with the NFU and I have to say they were superb. Bloke came round and viewed the damage and passed everything I wanted to do (I was pretty fucking reasonable as it happens but I did stretch it in places ).

I'm no longer with the NFU because of their bee-killing policies but the lesson I learned was find a good reliable insurer who will pay out if you need it.

 

[Leafster]

Another thing when you buy is shop around for home and contents insurance, and then check it every few years... I was getting massively ripped off by Halfax for years before I discovered I could get insurance online for about about 15% of what I was paying! - They tend to increase significantly above inflation each year, and then rely on you not checking.

My other tuppence is think how much maintenance you want to do, and whether you're really going to convert a property. Also are you really going to do DIY? If not allow for the extra costs when you're buying.

Another thing you could think of is borrowing some money on top of the cash you have to buy something larger. Interest rates and mortgages are ridiculously cheap at the moment, and you can lock into a low interest rate for 5-10 years.

I bought my slightly "tired" house with masses of enthusiasm to do it up. After a nightmare summer with builders on site permanently (when it wasn't raining ) who eventually abandoned the project my enthusiasm waned significantly. I don't regret buying it but I think I should have been more realistic about the time scale in getting everything done. It's easy to get carried away with plans to do EVERYTHING so I'd definitely think twice and make sure I had trusted tradespeople to do the work I couldn't do myself before embarking on a similar project. And, be prepared to live in a "nearly there" house for much longer than you may think.

 

[two sheds]

I've recently had some work done on chimneys and on the drainage system. I went with the MyBuilder site - have to say I'm impressed. You never know but at least there's a feedback mechanism and both roofer and plumber were excellent. Less than I was thinking of paying and did really professional job.

I'm spoiled though, the work done on my house in post-deluvian times was done by a small co-op who were absolutely superb. Gained an almost instantaneous rapport with the bloke who was in charge of it all because we both realized that he knew what he was doing and I didn't. He went off and did the work and if something unexpected came up he'd come to me and say what the problem. I'd say 'what would you do if this was yours?' and he'd tell me and I'd say 'ok lets do that then '.

 

[Hollis]

Me and DIY is a non-starter. In fact me and tradespeople in general is I feel nearly always a disaster.

I used the website 'ratedpeople' a couple of times, only to get people who didn't really know what they were doing. One guy manged to block up my heating system then vanished, while another guy messed up fitting a blind, only for his wife to come back and do it for him..

I'm currently using 'checkatrade' for an electrician.. but still having mixed results. Some lot came around, didn't really do anything much, decided not to quote, and still want to charge. The guy I've got in now seems to know his stuff...

I guess personal recommendations are the best, but you can't always get those, or they're booked up for weeks/months..

 

[moonsi til]

I have not read thread just OP , my advice based on my own experience would be absolutely avoid leasehold. I have a leasehold flat which I’m remortgaging & I hear there is a fee of who knows how much to tell them I’m changing lender. The value also depreciates as the lease lowers. I currently have about 112 years on my mine which is great but when it nears 80 I will need to pay for an extension. Plus lots of other licence to print money horrors.

Don’t be afraid to take on a property at top of your budget if it’s more where you want to live , right place. You can do any work that needs doing over time etc & mortgage payments will reduce. I bought a cheaper house as I had the fear but soon realised I would have been OK & could have bought bigger/better etc. I was happy in my house for 8 years & did work over the years & recently sold making enough profit/equity to move into that bigger/better house however selling and buying another house is expensive & had I not had the fear I probably would have been in a house I was happy to stay in. I bought a mid terrace & really needed a semi as it’s a PITA with bikes taking through the house so also think about things like that.

Good luck , buying a home is exciting.

 

[Artaxerxes]

I bought my slightly "tired" house with masses of enthusiasm to do it up. After a nightmare summer with builders on site permanently (when it wasn't raining ) who eventually abandoned the project my enthusiasm waned significantly. I don't regret buying it but I think I should have been more realistic about the time scale in getting everything done. It's easy to get carried away with plans to do EVERYTHING so I'd definitely think twice and make sure I had trusted tradespeople to do the work I couldn't do myself before embarking on a similar project. And, be prepared to live in a "nearly there" house for much longer than you may think.

I've always been told it's best to do one room at a time. Not sure how that holds up for an entire buggered property. I'm guessing outer shell first to seal it > Wiring > then focus on one room at a time

 

[Leafster]

I've always been told it's best to do one room at a time. Not sure how that holds up for an entire buggered property. I'm guessing outer shell first to seal it > Wiring > then focus on one room at a time

I may have given the wrong impression when I said ‘tired’. It wasn’t a wreck, just that it had been rented out for the previous decade and the landlord had done less than the minimum necessary to keep it in reasonable shape. There were two serious problems, the electrics were dangerous (how the landlord got away with that I don’t know!) and the property is built on a steep slope so has retaining walls in the front and rear gardens which were falling down.

I know a good electrician so the wiring was made safe within a week. He identified all the redundant dangerous wiring so I could remove it and he upgraded the rest. For instance there was bare wires in the loft and even in the front garden! There wasn’t any earthing either! Since then he’s been back a few times to enhance things like installing a smart home system and adding outdoor lighting and sockets to the front and rear gardens. The outdoor lighting is pretty critical with a garden on so many levels with numerous flights of steps to get between them. There are three separate sets of steps just to get from the road to my front door.
The main problems came when I tried to get the retaining walls sorted. No one wanted to do it because of the steep slopes. My surveyor had suggested a budget of around £2500 per wall (4 needed fixing) but that proved to be extremely optimistic. I found out after I moved in that one of the neighbours had been given a quote of £50k for some similar work. Eventually I found someone on checkatrade with a good rating who quoted £15k so I got them in. They said it would take them 3 weeks. Three months later they were still here. In that time they had to rebuild one end of a wall they built and the return on my boundary as they’d built it in the wrong place, they got the measurements wrong for two of the other walls and built them in a way that they didn’t line up with the existing steps so they had to bodge that. They didn’t dig the footings deep enough for one wall so when they came to level up the ground in front of it they had to cut out the front of the footings they’d built as they were then exposed and had to bodge the render on the wall. They thought it was possible to lay a lawn on just five centimetres of soil over a bed of solid chalk. They eventually admitted they hadn’t done a proper survey of the site so didn’t have a coordinated plan to get the levels right. They also laid a patio for me (not in the £15k budget) which they had to take up and re do as they hadn’t levelled that bit either. It was also slightly in the wrong place even though I marked it out with them - instead of laying the first slabs against the markers they started at the other end a miscalculated the size of the slabs.

Finally after three months they left on a Friday never to reappear having not completed the steps and pillars by the last wall. They also left a pile of spoil and rubbish filling one of my parking spaces and one of my neighbour’s. they wouldn’t answer any of my calls or emails so I gave up. Fortunately I hadn’t paid them for the last tranche of work which they didn’t finish so I didn’t lose out too much.

 

[Artaxerxes]

Bloody hell

 

[Leafster]

There were other minor issues with the house but I’ve been reluctant to get them sorted after that one bad experience. Some of the very old windows needed to be replaced. They were 90 years old and wouldn’t close properly so I’ve had them replaced with modern thermally efficient ones. I’ve also had the old sliding patio doors replaced as they just let the wind and cold in through the gap between the panels. The old front door had to go to as you could see daylight between the wooden panels!

After five years I’ve finally had a new boiler installed and relocated so that’s now sorted but I still need to replace the soffits and gutters. Now that the boiler’s been relocated I can finally sort out the room that it was in. It needs a new ceiling and some of the walls need the plaster work repaired or redone completely.

The the plan of getting everything done in the first couple of years didn’t work out and I’m not really sure if I’ll have done everything within the next two. So, I guess what I’m saying is things don’t always go to plan and they always seem to take longer than anticipated so beware of taking on a property that needs too much work unless you have the patience and stamina (and money) to see it through to the end!

 

[danski]

Yeah, it often seems the more you start doing, the more you discover that also needs doing.

“We’ll be stupid not to get it done at this stage as we might have to undo all that other work in the future”

 

[two sheds]

A friend made the mistake of having 'nice to do' things in the garden - large shed plus woodshed but then ran out of money for doing essential stuff inside the house. That and unrelated financial problems have eventually meant she's moved and downsized.

 

[two sheds]

Yeah, it often seems the more you start doing, the more you discover that also needs doing.

“We’ll be stupid not to get it done at this stage as we might have to undo all that other work in the future”

Yep in all the work I had done that often happened - for example they had to take a floor up and then discovered that the beams were in dodgy condition so needed reinforcing.

On the other hand when they took a hardboard floor up upstairs they found original (wide) floorboards underneath so bloke doing the work (now a good mate) filled in the gaps between them with thin strips and sanded and varnished them - now look lovely.

I occasionally talk to people who say they're thinking of insulating the downstairs ceilings (was suggested I do it, too) which I've never understood the point of since you're just stopping the heat go upstairs, and there's often anyway a big fuck-off hole in the stair well for the heat to go up. For sound insulation perhaps but not heat insulation.

 

[A380]

How does this happen, how do the scammers know how to do it and when!
There have been stories of people losing tens of thousands of pounds like this, either by scammers or sending the money to an
incorrect account because they got a single digit wrong

I always send a small amount, a pound and an odd number of pennies, for any transfer first and check the proper recipient gets it. More because of errors .

 

[WouldBe]

I occasionally talk to people who say they're thinking of insulating the downstairs ceilings (was suggested I do it, too) which I've never understood the point of since you're just stopping the heat go upstairs, and there's often anyway a big fuck-off hole in the stair well for the heat to go up. For sound insulation perhaps but not heat insulation.

I've insulated the downstairs ceilings as I was doing the floors up and it has made a big difference.

 

[two sheds]

I've insulated the downstairs ceilings as I was doing the floors up and it has made a big difference.

Do you not have a stairwell? And surely it makes it correspondingly colder upstairs?

 

[WouldBe]

Do you not have a stairwell? And surely it makes it correspondingly colder upstairs?

Yes I have stairs but I keep the doors closed. Not colder upstairs as I have radiators up there as well, they may stay on a bit longer but there's no point in heating the void between floors where if it's not sealed well then drafts can just 'blow the heat away'.

 

[two sheds]

Ah ok I've got open stairway and just floorboards between upstairs and downstairs.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

I've always been told it's best to do one room at a time. Not sure how that holds up for an entire buggered property. I'm guessing outer shell first to seal it > Wiring > then focus on one room at a time

not that i've done an 'entire buggered property' but yes, that would make sense.

things like electrics, plumbing and replacing the windows will all probably need a bit of re-decorating after, so decorating later rather than sooner, then new carpets after you've finished painting, not just before.

Yeah, it often seems the more you start doing, the more you discover that also needs doing.

yes.

A friend made the mistake of having 'nice to do' things in the garden - large shed plus woodshed but then ran out of money for doing essential stuff inside the house.

oops.

yes, set priorities...

 

[Hollis]

The electrician is suggesting I should have an "RCD fitted" - he's not pushing it on me... apparently if you're letting you have to have one.. not that I'm planning on that. Says it will show up any only defects in the wiring.. which I suspect there will be..

RCDs

 

[two sheds]

Yes they're much safer, hopefully cut out before you get electrocuted.

 

[Leafster]

The electrician is suggesting I should have an "RCD fitted" - he's not pushing it on me... apparently if your letting you have to have one.. not that I'm planning on that. Says it will show up any only defects the wiring.. which I suspect there will be..

RCDs

One of the things my electrician did as part of the safety work was to replace the consumer unit. This has RCDs built into it.

 

[WouldBe]

Ah ok I've got open stairway and just floorboards between upstairs and downstairs.

Yeah no point insulating then. I'm not going to bother doing the hall ceiling when I get round to doing it as the heat will just go up the stairwell anyway.

 

[two sheds]

I could probably actually do with sound insulation between the beams downstairs because sound travels very easily - since there's only me here though it doesn't really matter

 

[WouldBe]

One of the things my electrician did as part of the safety work was to replace the consumer unit. This has RCDs built into it.

The electrician is suggesting I should have an "RCD fitted" - he's not pushing it on me... apparently if you're letting you have to have one.. not that I'm planning on that. Says it will show up any only defects in the wiring.. which I suspect there will be..

RCDs

When I did mine I put rcbo's in, a combination of circuit breaker and RCD. That way if a fault develops only the affected circuit trips out whereas with a modern split load consumer unit if you get a fault then all the circuits on the rcd go off.

 

[WouldBe]

I could probably actually do with sound insulation between the beams downstairs because sound travels very easily - since there's only me here though it doesn't really matter

Sure I've seen some thin sound insulation board (for under laminate flooring?) You could lay under carpet.