Viewing / Buying a house

[Demitri_C]

You can get a survey done but you dont realise how much work a house needs until you get the keys. When we got ours it needed more work than we realised

Thankfully got lucky as this was during the stamp duty holiday and my stamp duty went from i think was 39k to 7k so paid for most of the work. Just went cheap on things like wardrobes from IKEA and tv units side tables from amazon saved lot of money

Edited April 19, 2023 by Demitri_C

[Tayls]

33 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

Thankfully got lucky as this was during the stamp duty holiday and my stamp duty went from i think was 39k to 7k so paid for most of the work. 

39k stamp duty?? Did you buy Dewsbury-Hall or something? 

[Demitri_C]

9 minutes ago, Tayls said:

39k stamp duty?? Did you buy Dewsbury-Hall or something? 

London prices init ( well im on the outskirts but its like 10 mins from london Borough)

4 bed houses are **** expensive here

Edited April 19, 2023 by Demitri_C

[Genie]

I remember the stamp duty holiday, price rocketed higher than the cost of stamp duty and people still thought they’d saved money  

[Demitri_C]

1 hour ago, Genie said:

I remember the stamp duty holiday, price rocketed higher than the cost of stamp duty and people still thought they’d saved money  

I was actually quite lucky as i already agreed the price and the sale was close to completion when they introduced it. If they wanted more money i would have told them to piss off and i would have walked

[Seat68]

20 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

I was actually quite lucky as i already agreed the price and the sale was close to completion when they introduced it. If they wanted more money i would have told them to piss off and i would have walked

Same for me, I benefited from the stamp duty holiday. 

Since I left my street 2 years ago, the ceiling price has lifted massively. it averaged 139k for a 2-3 bed terraced house, one recently sold a few doors away from our old house for 200k. Its a terraced house. Crazy.

[StefanAVFC]

We're almost exactly a year in ours now.

It's been fairly smooth sailing but now we have a leak somewhere under our floor, and it's ruining some of our walls. Still don't know where it is, scared we'll need to dig up our tiles and search which would be a disaster as we love our tiles, and we can't get them anymore.  

[Genie]

5 minutes ago, StefanAVFC said:

We're almost exactly a year in ours now.

It's been fairly smooth sailing but now we have a leak somewhere under our floor, and it's ruining some of our walls. Still don't know where it is, scared we'll need to dig up our tiles and search which would be a disaster as we love our tiles, and we can't get them anymore.  

Is it under floor heating or just a pipe going under the floor to another part of the house?

If it’s the latter you could just isolate the underfloor bit and re-route the pipe through a wall or ceiling. 

[StefanAVFC]

8 minutes ago, Genie said:

Is it under floor heating or just a pipe going under the floor to another part of the house?

If it’s the latter you could just isolate the underfloor bit and re-route the pipe through a wall or ceiling. 

We have underfloor heating. We also have a suspicion that when we replaced the piping in the laundry to install the heat pump, something was damaged.

[blandy]

10 hours ago, AvfcRigo82 said:

The amount of work we used to do for people who would insist paying us to remove their woodchip wallpaper, we would always advise them not to do it and spend the money and overboard and skim it all instead.

Can you explain something for me please? Genuinely, I have woodchip wallpaper in the hall and landing, and it needs redecorating. What are the pros and cons of the two options (stripping it off and overboard and skim) - because to my inexpert eyes, the overboarding seems like a lot more work - what about the skirting boards - they'd all have to come off wouldn't they? Surely it's better just to strip off the paper and tidy up any plaster cracks and then redecorate? 

[AvfcRigo82]

22 minutes ago, blandy said:

Can you explain something for me please? Genuinely, I have woodchip wallpaper in the hall and landing, and it needs redecorating. What are the pros and cons of the two options (stripping it off and overboard and skim) - because to my inexpert eyes, the overboarding seems like a lot more work - what about the skirting boards - they'd all have to come off wouldn't they? Surely it's better just to strip off the paper and tidy up any plaster cracks and then redecorate? 

I suppose it does comes down to customer preference most of the time.

However, more often than not the hidden nasties that are lurking behind the woodchip can be pretty bad and creates more work meaning more costly for the customer. It's why we always would advise taking the Board/Skim option.

If you are one of the lucky ones and there are no real problems once it's stripped then it's a bonus.

Yes, it is alot of work regarding overboarding and skimming and replacement of the bits if skirting granted, however, I guess a speculate to accumulate scenario for the longer term is where I'm coming from. It's a much better result.

I agree it's not for everyone, but it's short term pain for long term game.

Because it's not a whole house and just the stairs and landing, it might not be too bad and not too much hassle in stripping and hopefully if you do go down that route Pete that you are one of the lucky ones that has very little damage hiding underneath.

[AlwaysAVFC]

2 hours ago, Seat68 said:

Same for me, I benefited from the stamp duty holiday. 

Since I left my street 2 years ago, the ceiling price has lifted massively. it averaged 139k for a 2-3 bed terraced house, one recently sold a few doors away from our old house for 200k. Its a terraced house. Crazy.

We bought at the same time, it was a first time buy so would have been excluded from stamp duty anyway but so glad we got in then. We paid £205k and ones in the same road now are going for £250k. Next door moved in before Christmas, they paid the same as us but have to literally do every room and heating system.

[Seat68]

41 minutes ago, AlwaysAVFC said:

We bought at the same time, it was a first time buy so would have been excluded from stamp duty anyway but so glad we got in then. We paid £205k and ones in the same road now are going for £250k. Next door moved in before Christmas, they paid the same as us but have to literally do every room and heating system.

I assumed over time house prices would creep downwards, the street I am in now has also seen a 40-50k rise that has not returned to what it was 2 years ago. I have a 4 bed, 4 bathroom and like you are saying, 3 bed 1 bathroom houses in our street that need work doing to them are currently for sale and selling for well above what we paid. If I was younger and looking at this as an investment I would be very pleased.

[tinker]

3 hours ago, blandy said:

Can you explain something for me please? Genuinely, I have woodchip wallpaper in the hall and landing, and it needs redecorating. What are the pros and cons of the two options (stripping it off and overboard and skim) - because to my inexpert eyes, the overboarding seems like a lot more work - what about the skirting boards - they'd all have to come off wouldn't they? Surely it's better just to strip off the paper and tidy up any plaster cracks and then redecorate? 

I would  say so, imagine the work involved in the door surrounds , skirting , stairs?  It would be very expensive and time consuming, probably  be easier to go back to the brick and start again.......I would strip and repair. 

[Genie]

1 hour ago, Seat68 said:

I assumed over time house prices would creep downwards, the street I am in now has also seen a 40-50k rise that has not returned to what it was 2 years ago. I have a 4 bed, 4 bathroom and like you are saying, 3 bed 1 bathroom houses in our street that need work doing to them are currently for sale and selling for well above what we paid. If I was younger and looking at this as an investment I would be very pleased.

I think the over boarding idea is more relevant to woodchip on the ceiling. 

Saying that, you could probably take the skirting and architrave off the walls quite quickly though, much quicker than peeling off the walls, and the result is some silky smooth walls to decorate.

[AlwaysAVFC]

1 hour ago, Seat68 said:

I assumed over time house prices would creep downwards, the street I am in now has also seen a 40-50k rise that has not returned to what it was 2 years ago. I have a 4 bed, 4 bathroom and like you are saying, 3 bed 1 bathroom houses in our street that need work doing to them are currently for sale and selling for well above what we paid. If I was younger and looking at this as an investment I would be very pleased.

There has defintely been a slowing down of sales by me. I'm a a postie on a collection of 3 pretty much completed new build estates. For a little while now it has been the smaller ones that have been up for sale longer but there's some bigger ones too taking longer to sell. There's also been a flurry of houses put up for sale so there is a lot of competition. I think houses are still going for the asking price but not going crazy like they were, and if the seller/estate agent goes a bit greedy and ask too much they are not selling before lowering the asking price.

[Stevo985]

On 18/04/2023 at 22:19, Stevo985 said:

Turns out the people that lived there were very much into their DIY. They did loads of it.

The only problem is, they weren't very good at it. It's a house of botch jobs.

 

Enjoying it though, just a lot more to do than I thought there was

I've worked on it every day from 13th Apr to yesterday. And all but two of those days were at least 12 hour days.

The house is an absolute cluster ****. On the one hand I admire the previous owners for taking on every single task that has ever needed doing rather than using professionals. But on the other hand I hate their guts for completely **** them all up. Bar none. Every day brings another surprise

 

Bitten the bullet and hired a plasterer to skim almost every room. After 6 solid days of stripping wallpaper for 12 hours a day (literally), I finally admitted defeat. They can't be saved

[Stevo985]

Some examples:

• Took the wallpaper off the chimney breast in the lounge, plus unscrewed the fireplace. Half the plaster fell away with it and bricks underneath it just fell out. They'd just blocked off the chimney themselves with a bit of plywood and plastered over it themselves. Already had a bricky in to fix that
• Took the carpet off the stairs. At some point they must have had a big curtail step at the bottom but decided they wanted to replace it. So they just knocked up a step themselves out of MDF and bolted it on to the bottom of the actual staircase. Needs replacing
• Took out the fitted wardrobes (that they'd obviously built themselves. They looked **** awful). The frame they built was slightly too wide for the room, the window sill and part of the wall over the window were in the way. Just trim the frame right? Or cut out a section of the frame so it fits? Nah, just gouge a massive hole in the wall and saw off part of the window sill so it fits

 

They also left without clearing the loft or the shed. Absolutely rammed full of stuff, so having to go through solicitors to make sure they pay to clear it. Right ballache

[Seat68]

2 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

Some examples:

• Took the wallpaper off the chimney breast in the lounge, plus unscrewed the fireplace. Half the plaster fell away with it and bricks underneath it just fell out. They'd just blocked off the chimney themselves with a bit of plywood and plastered over it themselves. Already had a bricky in to fix that
• Took the carpet off the stairs. At some point they must have had a big curtail step at the bottom but decided they wanted to replace it. So they just knocked up a step themselves out of MDF and bolted it on to the bottom of the actual staircase. Needs replacing
• Took out the fitted wardrobes (that they'd obviously built themselves. They looked **** awful). The frame they built was slightly too wide for the room, the window sill and part of the wall over the window were in the way. Just trim the frame right? Or cut out a section of the frame so it fits? Nah, just gouge a massive hole in the wall and saw off part of the window sill so it fits

 

They also left without clearing the loft or the shed. Absolutely rammed full of stuff, so having to go through solicitors to make sure they pay to clear it. Right ballache

I find things out about my house all the time, day one, they had taken with them every single plug (sink) in the house, zero plugs. Then I noticed they had painted the toilet bowl, recently whilst having a carpet fitted, turns out they had plastered a wall and fitted a skirting board whilst the carpet was on the floor, so now I need to replace a floor board due to the aggressive way I removed the carpet. Oh one fun things was a wall cupboard was held up by a single screw, a substantial one but glad we didnt put anything in it before realising. Also kitchen, dining room x2, living room, bathroom, bedroom 1, hall, bathroom 2 have between 4 and 6 bulbs per light switch, so now I am a major investor in lightbulbs. 

[Stevo985]

They also had no keys for the external front door. There's an internal front door which they had keys for, but I could probably open it with a swift kick. The external door is like a proper UPVC porch, so where the real security is.

They didn't seem to think it was an issue that they didn't leave us keys for that. And they didn't have any. "We just never used it"

Yeah well we'd quite like to use it to be honest!