Telometer

House prices are 10% off peak (nation average). Inflation over the last three years is maybe 10-15%. Prices are therefore 25% off peak in real terms. Another five years at 5% p.a. and they'll be 50% off peak in real terms, but without having killed the banks, the economy or the people. If you wish for a 50% crash you won't be able to afford a house either. Or anything, in fact.

Doing a PIR requires all the cables to be disconnected at the consumer unit. A joint should only ever be made once (as it involves squashing the copper wire). Therefore post-PIR all the wires have to be shortened. (Or else the electrician is a cowboy.) I would NEVER EVER allow a buyer to undertake a PIR on my property. Who pays for the rectification work if their spark messes up?

Have a read of this publication by RICS. http://www.rics.org/site/download_feed.aspx?fileID=2281&fileExtension=PDF If they used a moisture meter then it's rubbish.

A 75k mortgage at 5% interest rate is 4k p.a. Factor in repayment of maybe 3k then you are looking at 50% of your gross salary going on your mortgage. You cannot. Keep saving.

It does not require rewiring. It requires a new consumer unit (£100 plus labour to fit it, which cannot be more than half a day to a day, so under £1,000 total). The earth bonding is a matter of a few minutes work. By all means see if you can negotiate the price down a little, but this is not rewiring the surveyor is talking about. Modern wiring (installed post 1960ish) does not have an expiry date. Yes the specs have changed - the earth wire has become thicker, early lighting circuits didn't have any earth, but no need to rewire - and if you suggest this your vendor will think you're having a laugh. Oh yes, and if you want the vendor to pay to have your chimney swept or your boiler serviced, don't be surprised if he tells you to go and find something different to buy.

Good on her. Bringing up children is expensive, this is just another part of the cost. Not having children on account of financial pressures is tragic.

Difficult to be certain without seeing the full plans etc. But broadly it means that in order to access your property (presumably coloured red on the plan) you have to cross a road that does not belong either to you or the council. However you have a right of way over it. Additionally you have a right to lay services pipes and cables under it. In general you have no right to cross somebody else's land or to dig it up for services, but you can be granted a right of way or an easement. And yes, as it's an unadopted ("private") road you have to pay for maintenance.

If house price deflation is a GOOD THING - as it reduces state subsidy for housing, and allows the free market to work properly (on the basis HPI arose from Government incompetence/deliberate policy), then why is it not a good thing to solve high unemployment by abolishing the minimum wage. ::Stands back and awaits flames from the "my life should be subsidised and it's not far that it isn't" crowd on here::

I've just had my mouseprice email for the month too. For SE1. And some of the price rises on people who bought in 2007 and sold just now http://www.mouseprice.com/area-guide/house-price-trends/SE1 Purchase May 2007 for 280k; sell May 2010 for 415. That's a 48% increase of anybody's money since "peak" LOL. Jolly glad I didn't stay out of the market when I STR in 2007.

You're living in the past! 28/08/2009 £1,200,000 Ter. F/H No Map 11, Brookside, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, CB2 1JE I think some of its neighbours may be terraced too, despite listed in the LR data as semi.

http://www.deloitte.com/assets/Dcom-UnitedKingdom/Local%20Assets/Documents/Industries/Real%20Estate/UK_RE_RealEstateExecutiveReportNov09.pdf An interesting read - it's about commercial property which tends to lead residential and explains very clearly why all those funds are struggling to find anything into which they wish to invest their cash. This is why there has been no HPC worth mentioning.

Thanks. Spanish slate doesn't have the life of Welsh. Cheapskate. She would be nuts even to think of replacing the glorious Georgian windows - there's even original glass in some of them. She doesn't mention the structural issues and their cost - the back of the house is held up with scaffolding poles... And saving £10 per gallon of paint, and being forced to live in beige hell doesn't seem like much of a bargain. Oh well!

To be fair, we are talking about British Land investing in commercial property. Commercial property is down about 50% from peak. Add an extra third off for the Euro, and to a Euro buyer they're getting nearly three times as much property for their money as they were 2-3 years ago. That's a proper crash; there's not much further south it could go. Residential is another world.

Golly, anybody would have thought you were posting on HPC rather than Moneysavingexpert. ((hugz))

A market can only turn when the last bear becomes a bull. At that point there are NO more buyers, so it will turn.

Another war would not be like the last one. There is no real need for soldiers in a war like WW2 nowadays. No need to send thousands of men to die in the skies over enemy territory. Blowing up the enemy can be done in the comfort of ones own office. I dread to think what another war would be like; surely it would all be over in minutes - the nuclear war we used to fear in the 60s, 70s and 80s.

In latest news... Bermondsey square http://*******.com/yhf5v5u which has recently been done up and has been on the market for no more, I guess, than 6 weeks (dare say I posted somewhere when it went on, but cannot be bothered to look), is now under offer. At an eyewatering, world record, advertised £1,250,000 or £675 psf... it must have made 1.1 for them to go under offer so quickly. Time will tell what it made.. I guess the one nearly next door (on at between 825 and 900, been on for 2 years or more) will sell quite quickly now. Also, here's one on Pages Walk that must have gone under offer as quickly as it came on the market (unless anybody knows any different?). http://*******.com/yh5uxwj At an advertised £479,000 that's £550 psf. Note: Two years ago £500 psf was eyewatering world record territory in this area. Edited to add that in late 2007 (before there was any sense of a softening of prices in this area) the (50% larger) house next-door-but-one sold for a shade over £200 psf. Admittedly it needed complete top-to-bottom refurbishment. Even so...

It may well be possible to get the insurance to pay, even if the place is subsequently sold. Talk to somebody at the insurance company, get their agreement that the insurance continues into your ownership and the repairs will be done post-completion by the vendor's ins co.

It's so much slower than the old one. This is invariably alleged to be progress, but in reality is just progress for Dell and HP - who sell a new faster computer to you. And it takes pages and pages to scroll down as it's so spaced out. For the best forum software ever, look at the honestjohn.co.uk website. Nice and compact, easy to scroll down.

http://www.cheffins.co.uk/assets/documents/Fenland_Catalogue.pdf For those wishing to furnish their house, this is a no reserve sale of remaining stock at their premises. No connection etc. etc., but it popped into my inbox.

Well, Cartimandua, you are of course right, but this is nothing new for local authorities have "always" been able to condemn property as unfit for habitation, so no change there. The property, jackofalltrades, is clearly not in multiple occupation. In fact, it's not in any sort of occupation at all, which is why it's on the rental market. Returning to OP's case, he'd be better off looking for something worthwhile to worry about, like whether Jack Straw's socks match.

Your landlord is doing you a favour because you want to move to a bigger house. And now you're complaining that he's trying to screw you???!!!! Get a life, stop whinging, and go back to where you came from.

Building regs are not retrospective. So provided the place was legal when built in 1066 it's still legal now. Take chip off shoulder and place in waste paper bin.

Oh aren't you smug. But still wrong. Try re-reading TCGA 222 with a particular focus on (8). And here it is in easy English. http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/cg4manual/CG64555.htm

Vendor is a listed PLC. Doubt anything dodgy going on - other than over-ambitious property speculation.