Buying A House: C or D?

See I would change nearly everything about that! No original fire places or Coving or ceiling roses! Plus I have a personal loathing of beige bathrooms. There's one coMpletely clad in those beige tiles on the place we're interested in and my heart sinks to think of ripping them out but I want to re create our current bathroom.

have to say sick, that place looks clinical and heartless ..

give me a lived in home with scars of life over a showcase house anyday ..

Oh I like both extremes. Every house had to be new sometime! Also the non-furniture furniture they've filled that modern house with is the absolute WORST, and they don't have any window treatments, probably to show you the maximum views etc, but who lives in a house with no shades or curtains??? That's ridiculous.

Coveting those bathrooms hardcore.

I like the rooms where you can sit around and look at the views, but I'd feel a little ridiculous doing my cooking business on a pair of kitchen worktops dumped in the middle of a giant open-plan non-kitchen area, even if those two worktops + the space between is bigger and more kitted out than my whole current kitchen

(but then for me cooking involves making a mess and dropping stuff and swearing and being too tired to clean up afterwards, so that's not really something I want on view to any guests who are sitting in other parts of my imaginary spotless luxury design house. Not that I'd actually be able to keep those tastefully uncluttered either)

omg we looked at this amazing place today. Detached Georgian place, want to sell quickly so will accept an offer we can afford, amazing huge rooms like a palace, everything we've been looking for, just unbelievable. BUT it's right on a main road on one side so the garden is really noisy. Inside the house it's ok. We've already nixed another nice-enough place on the basis of noisy garden (is as good as no garden?) so we're totally torn up about this one. Argh. Is there such a thing as noise-sucking machines?

Shrubbery and water features?

A tall baffled wall covered in vines on both sides oughtta do it.

Yeah, foliage and water, soak up that noise.

Doing some google-fu on it. There's already a fair bit of foliage but not all the way along. It's always going to be a gamble!

Well, the last two weeks have been hell, and there have been some serious contract wranglings and it looked as if, six months from accepting an offer on our flat, it might all fall through. But this morning our buyer has signed the contract and our solicitors ave been instructed to exchange. We will complete next Weds or Thurs. half a year of uncertainty and expense (it's cost us £2k more than anticipated because of lease / management company issues) is nearly over and we'll be in and settled for Christmas.

Phew.

Wow, was actually going to ask you how it going as we're about to embark on same. Offers all agreed as of Friday but not getting overly optimistic yet. Our management co i.e. worst person in the world is causing massive hassle although not directly to do with us buying and selling.

Good luck. Remember, if you want things to happen, you can make them happen.

Cheers. Yeah we have that attitude, sadly this often means reducing prices/ paying more :-)

gl all. Hopefully this is another few years away yet for us.

Contracts exchanged, moving next Thursday!

We've changed estate agents because the one we had just wasn't getting people in the door. At least the house we want isn't gone yet.

We've just had ours emphasise the importance of staying on the good side of the management company as their delays can hold things up badly. The management company is a woman who's avoided actually living in her flat for the past week so she doesn't have to speak to us...

Our estate agents were pretty good in that they cared a lot about getting good pictures and made sure all their agents had gone around the place before doing any viewings. Can't really fault them except ... we didn't get a particularly good price for our place. Lots of people were viewing. It's downhill for the rest of the year pretty much, if we hadn't found anywhere we'd be trying again in Spring.

Did/do either of you have to do a fire and asbestos risk report for any communal areas of the building (if you're in a flat)? It's the most pointless thing ever and doesn't seem to apply to communal areas of domestic buildings but apparently have to do them anyway. Just spent ages trying to find anything that might have asbestos (the guidance is all 'if you don't know ASSUME IT'S THERE') but our reports are the shortest documents in the history of mankind. Not sure if it's petulant to answer 'source of oxygen' with 'air'.

Ha, thank god we didn't have to deal with that. Did become a fast expert on asbestos when we bought this place as there's some in the roof tiles or something, but it's the least harmful type. You'd have to eat the tiles to get ill.

We're all packed, bar the TV, shower gel, and my bottle of beer. Feel stressed and knackered in equal measure. Roll on THS time tomorrow when it's all over.

good luck! We've just taken some of the family around our house-to-be, a third viewing kind of thing. It's an amazing house, won't believe it if it all goes to plan without something going wrong.

And we're in.

pics!

Soon as the Internet is back on! Meant to be tomorrow.

excellent. are you fully done with the new place or do you plan to work on it etc as you go on?

bravo sick.

we too had this kind of crap b4 we got hq.

we x-fered the deposit over to arrive before a certain hour, and then with minutes to spare we received a phone call from our soliciti-scum advising us that an hour b4 the deadline the money was not in their account.

after a heated discussion during which we explained that we did not pay the soliciti-scum to be so relaxed and nonchalant re such situations we decided to transfer more ££ into the relevant account using a much more expensive and direct banking electr-system.

thankfully we got the outcome we needed, and 10 years on, i am still in hq proving that all that short term crap was worth it.

hopefully you too get the outcome you deserve.

for all the politics, there is nothing like having your own house.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7273/8151292287_7ae9dc75fd.jpg
Bedroom mantelpiece by sickmouthy, on Flickr

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7138/8151304406_aa79018c5e.jpg
Second bedroom mantelpiece by sickmouthy, on Flickr

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8482/8151261379_80eb5d7455.jpg
Kitchen sink by sickmouthy, on Flickr

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7127/8151291992_d839bc4af6.jpg
Kitchen windowsill by sickmouthy, on Flickr

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8063/8151273940_7ae48d4d1d.jpg
Hi-fi by sickmouthy, on Flickr

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8348/8151277356_2f9d4bdd19.jpg
Cornicing by sickmouthy, on Flickr

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7277/8151283298_2b6d6d3277.jpg
Stained glass by sickmouthy, on Flickr

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7248/8151301484_518471ebe8.jpg
Green toilet seat by sickmouthy, on Flickr

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7133/8151306972_e55a342869.jpg
Desk by sickmouthy, on Flickr

i love that green toilet seat!!

£12 in B&Q: bought and installed today because the previous owners' one was crap. First toilet seat I've ever installed! It's awesome.

685's. Nice.

Nice hi-fi. Oh and the house is cool too :)

Your mantelpiece is the same as our current one

Ready to punch some solicitors right now
Stuff we asked them to send as a matter of priority has been sitting there for 8 days and another thing for several weeks
what in the actual fuck

Since changing agents we've had a steady stream of people through the door, but still no offers. :-(

I'm hearing that quite a bit - I imagine it's not going to get much better before Christmas? :(
But... should get better after that, I would've thought.

Yeah, this agent isn't worried at all. He seems to think as long as people are coming in then everything will be fine.

Actually, the guy who just left sounded kind of promising, but then I've thought that before about people that have viewed.

Bizarrely, the agent has just turned up randomly with a couple who were viewing further up the street and he talked into looking. Completely unplanned.

me having a house would equate to far too much time buying different mood lightings, installing them, and then exiting and re-entering rooms to see how i feel.

Are you there when they're viewing? I think I might find that a bit odd? That might be based on my one experience viewing when the owner was there (she was a little insane and so was the house). And I know how much of a pain it is to organise cleaning and getting out of the house in time.
Actually, that said, having the owner there for the second viewing was really good.

Not usually but am for this one as I'm being picked up by a work colleague from here at some point in the next hour - plus they weren't scheduled in.

I've viewed both ways and I don't actually mind either way. Sometimes it's nice for them to be there as they often know/push things the agent doesn't.

Yeah actually I remember when we rented our place out, I was usually out but happened to be in one time and pretty much had to do the agent's job for her. She was all 'look at this minor quirky feature!' and I was 'no, look at our shiny brand-new appliances'

Mine is stuff like "people further up the street have knocked the room through, so you must be able to do it".

Offer! A bit low, but if we can talk him up £10k we'll shake hands.

He'll only come some of the way. Might be a step too far unless I can lose it in the chain.

Well done. Our first offer was a lot under but they went up to +10k which was just about doable as our seller accepted a little lower in order to get going quickly.

Yeah, it's going to come down to whether we can do the deal on the house we want. Luckily they've been on for a while so you'd think they'd be open to lower offer.

Offer accepted, the guy had a second view last night to confirm. Agreed the price for the house we want to be in as well, and it's all just about affordable. Phew.

rah