Flopsy

Yes, my experience was bad. That's why I have been trying to follow what happens locally with both my GP and the hospital. I thought that once the vaccinations had been done the GP clinic would return to normal but it never happened. All the measures that were introduced due to Covid in my local area have continued.

They are still listed on the clinic's webpage but working from home with much reduced hours and never in the office. They have no face-to-face involvement with patients. The only person who sees or touches or examines a patient is the one Locum. For all I know they could be moon-lighting or have other income streams. (my old GP did say he wanted to leave (to Australia) and then resigned to come back as a Locum. I've not seen him for a while so he may have now now)

Sometimes they wait too long and then feel trapped and unable to cope with change. I have an elderly relative who wanted to move to a smaller home in an urban area but her husband said he thought he would "die" if they left the old family home. I think he was saying the leaving the big rural house was the start of his old age and death. The house became progressively more squalid. In the end they stayed put and he died suddenly. My Gt-Aunt couldn't cope with her grief and moving then. She became disabled and died years later. There is a similar thing in some other elderly relatives. They don't realise how quickly that old age, illness or bereavement can strike and don't make plans for their comfort. Then they can't cope with moving.

At my local clinic the GP rooms are empty and so are the rooms that had nurses in them. They employ one Locum GP to be on-call during the day there and one nurse to take bloods and do smear tests. The waiting rooms are empty. The practice manager won't take calls. My GP is no longer available for face-to-face visits and appointments take 3 weeks. They are by phone. There is no after hours provision of care. It was done pre-Covid by a group of local clinic together taking calls after 6pm and weekends. Now people are referred to A&E and the hospital minor injuries service. As an aside to previous comments on a different topic - "joy riding" really took off during Covid. Gangs of mainly young men in cars meet in carparks to race their cars and then out onto the roads. Behaviours may have changed.

Nothing selling in my Rightmove Bucks and Beds search. Guessing this 'buyer interest' is either people wanting to sell and checking prices or potential buyers checking to see if the market has fallen around them yet. Or worried home owners.

The sellers in my area (in Bucks) used that time to get rid of homes that they no longer wanted. Looking at the turnover near me it was more of a demand from buyers matched with sellers who wanted bigger homes or to move to another area. My neighbours who did sell wanted to leave houses with small rooms on multiple levels and buy something larger and easier to live in even if that meant leaving the area. One seller said that they were sick of not being able to fit their extended family around the dining table in the small sitting / dining area (kitchen was too small as well). Houses that had been on the market before and not sold finally did. These were the 3 storey terraced homes. The problems in these houses could not be fixed by a loft conversion and the gardens were too small for a decent conservatory. There were a lot of these added to other house though. I can't speak for all the buyers but the people who moved into these houses seem to be from outside this area, immigrants but not recent (eastern european and indian and chinese) and working from home.

Nothing selling in my Bucks and Beds search results on Rightmove. Asking prices are higher than they were before Xmas. The writing was on the wall with nothing selling back then but the new year has started with asking prices that would never have been achieved during the summer peak plus more.

It's an interesting idea. Gives disabled people a chance to see if they can find a reliable employer or job and then see if they are able to survive working long enough not to get laid off at the next wave of redundancies or whatever. Given the time it takes to get a disability benefit like PIP which I my experience can take years and attending tribunals to get the correct amount I can see why some disabled people would be scared to try and work then fail and start all over again.

With "under offer" I have noticed that EA's are inviting further offers from people who have already viewed the property or even encouraging new viewings. SSTC means the seller is happy (happier?) with the price offered and has accepted it and not allowing new viewings. Usually means it was the asking price or over. This might have just been a local thing though.

It can mean that the buyer has accepted an offer which is under the original asking price.

Few of the partners at my local GP surgery appear to work there full time. They have a Locum who is based there during the day. The partner GPs work limited hours by phone from home. The partner's may well be doing other things related to their business during office hours but seeing or talking to patients they aren't. It's not possible to see the GP I am registered with at the practice in person now. Phone consults are only available with him on certain days of the week and in certain hours. This is much less than before Covid. The "Practise Manager" stopped taking telephone calls during Covid and still doesn't. There used to be an "out of hours" service which was shared in a group of local GP practises. This has been out sourced. I'm still not sure who provides it but I do know that they are telephone based only and not in this geographical area. Their advice is usually in my experience to go to the local A&E. My old GP left because he didn't want to become a partner in a business (he said).

Agree, over Summer in my search list (Bucks and Beds) prices went very high and yet they seemed to go quickly. More recently the rentals are coming on the market with these silly prices but not shifting. The posts to local Facebook groups asking for rentals stopped. The glut seems to be with 3+ bedroom houses. This may be different in university towns which have there own yearly cycle which is still bad for renters.

There is a smattering of red appearing now on my Bucks and Beds search. Mainly flats and older terraced houses but is hopefully the start of what is to come. AND - hurray - no sign of a house we used to rent which was sold from under us and put on the market again at a ridiculous price. It did eventually go under offer but I had no idea if it did eventually sell in the end.

Local pub has cut it's menu down to only a few basic dishes. Had 2 courses and both were awful. Place was deserted and can see why. Indian restaurant still had great food but the heating was off and had to wear coat.

It's good to have something like this "in writing" to point to if we want to make an offer on a house.

This is the only bit I can find https://www.thesun.co.uk/money/20459551/extra-help-for-millions-on-universal-credit-mortgages/

I do open the window. Was brought up that homes should always be aired. Family of asthmatics. Our bathroom still got mouldy even with a window open. The extractor fan didn't work (this is a rental) and it took a year for the LL to replace it. This does make a difference but it needs to be on for hours. I have looked at other new builds in the surrounding areas for rental. Mould in bathrooms with windows is common. On Facebook people renting out their own homes were desperate to hide the mould before potential tenants saw it. En-suite bathrooms in particular are a problem many were built with no windows. There might be more than a window opening problem with new builds

The same thing can happen to someone renting (substitute rent for mortgage). The mortgage payer can choose to rent out their home and then move somewhere cheaper or with work, and then move back again when things improve. It's going to be individual of course. If they are in the early days of a mortgage it may be harder to get the banks permission and it can be hard to rent out a home for the amount needed (I have posted threads on how the rental market around me has a glut of bigger, more expensive (i.e. 3 and above BRs) houses right now). Someone renting in that position of no work / redundancy etc (it has happened to us) has to try and leave whilst under a rental agreement and move from rental home to rental home with no option of moving back into my original home. and a mortgage being paid off.

I would hate to suffer from such crippling anxiety that I was unable to work. It would be awful and affect my whole life. What we need is proper diagnosis and treatment. Also looking at the root causes. I know that sounds simple and don't mean it to be.

We did try living in Australia. Problem was the lack of work and high prices. The locals liked Australian citizens for jobs. Brits were tolerated in some companies but with constant complaining and racism. Flooding is a problem in many areas. Tap water was foul. Food expensive and often poor quality. Never seem so much rotten fruit and vegetables in supermarkets. Foreigners are the first to be laid off, employers were happy to break the laws knowing how hard it was to get redress. It was obvious from reading the judgements at their employment tribunals that foreigner's were not afforded the protection Australian residents were. Finding work could be hard if not in a city with very high rental and house prices. Didn't work for us. The days of moving to Aust and NZ are over due to high house prices. Even the recent falls in NZ aren't enough. There used to be a TV program (forget the name) about moving to these countries and I noticed over time that the housing being considered was moving further out of the cities and forcing immigrants into what would be very long commutes. The infrastructure isn't there to support this.

There was a rise in prices around me in the Summer but LL's are not getting this in my areas if interest now (Beds and Bucks). The advertised prices may be high. As I said in another thread a neighbour has gone abroad and is still trying to rent out their house. Viewings every few days but still available. Tenants are being pickier and negotiating. The Summer demand has stopped here. I thought that there might be people being driven out of London and looking further out but no sign of them now. We don't get an influx of students so maybe different to these cities.

Oh no. It's happened to us a couple of times now and in both cases it's been months after our offer was accepted and we had paid out money in legal fees. Hope their cash buyer changes their mind and disappears on them

The areas I am monitoring had a burst of rent increases over the summer (judging from the Rightmove search) but more recently things have tapered off. We don't have a large student population coming into these areas so it may be different. As I said on another thread a local house is being rented out by a family who have now left the UK. They did have a tenant lined up a month ago but this evaporated. It's still not rented out. In the Summer it would have gone quickly at a stupid rental price. I'm also seeing less posts to the local Facebook pages asking for homes to rent.

Are they intending to buy somewhere else or stay in London?

Unusual day today. Typical pattern is for reductions on the Monday and Tuesday of the week then new instructions for the rest of the week. Had a look at lunchtime and the only reduction was a flat. Now it's 18 reductions and 21 new instructions. The reductions include 3, 4 bedroom houses. I've not included new builds advertised by the developer in these figures. (this is in Buckinghamshire)