Bradbury Robinson

So in the case of HS2 they're going to compulsory purchase houses, to build a railway line, and then allow the builders to build houses along the railway line?

10% annually and 115% back after five years. I'm in!

I only saw the puff piece on the BBC website, it didn't cover much, did they go into any more detail in the programme about how they got to this point at all? Did they say what type of loan they took out or what amount, etc? I think I already know the answer really.

I had a handful of pensions floating around and wanted to consolidate them into one place. Partly for ease of access and also that I knew most of them were taking quite high fees. I thought speaking to an advisor might have been the way to go but in the end sorted myself out with HL, splitting the total pot up into a number of funds split across a few regions and industries. It may work or it may not but at least now it is in my hands. The reason(s) I didn't go with the advisor were: Charging a % fee of the overall pot rather than a set fee for advice. Suggested no way to monitor their performance over the old pension or in general. Continually pushed for annual reviews which, again, charge a fee. Continually brought up other areas such as life insurance, which I had never asked for.

I've always had Property Tracker installed and lately used House Prices IO for historical data: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/property-tracker/abgkpdjomdmemeefdefalbeogkmlmand?hl=en-GB https://houseprices.io/

I don't think I can add much on top of what has been said but to be in your position at 24, asking these questions and making (what seems to be) the right lifestyle choices is quite impressive. Thinking back to when I was 24 I was in a low paid job, living with the parents and hanging round with my mates, mostly acting like a bunch of ****heads. I'm now much older, slightly better paid and a lot of the mates have moved on, some would say I'm still a ****head though! Good luck with whatever you choose.

Having been a regular reader of this forum for a while I followed this advice when we moved into a place in 2008. It was nothing major, just a few small issues like a cracked pain of glass, chipped mirror in the bathroom, broken bit of wood trim, etc. I called the landlord to discuss them all but she said she knows what is wrong and not to worry. So I kept all of the pictures and just sent an email to confirm what we had discussed. When we came to move out the problems were still there plus a few other minor things that had happened during our tenancy, so we were fully expecting a bit of negotiation on the deposit and a few weeks of haggling. The only thing that got raised was a missing set of net curtains from one window, they only covered the lower half of the window and looked like they were about ten years old. When you hear the problems that other people have with renting she actually didn't seem too bad. She was happy taking the money and leaving us to it, the few bigger issues we had she dealt with in reasonable time.

It always makes me laugh when new properties get put on Rightmove with the bare minimum of info when they're trying to sell them for anything upwards of £250,000. I've seen million pound houses with a road name and price with 'More info to follow' and a placeholder picture. As though getting it on there early, rather than waiting a few days for the extra info, might make somebody jump at it. From our experience the EAs we dealt with when renting were reasonable, although they didn't really have much to do. The one we dealt with when buying was quite good but they all seem to fail on a) passing on message and b) calling you back. We also had errors from the solicitor and surveyor when buying, the ones you want NOT to make any mistakes.

Can you just have 'some kind of contract'? Surely there's either 'a' contract or no contract?! I think it's the landlady that needs to be concerned in this instance, she should definitely have something agreed with the EA and, like it or not, bypassing them to snag a tenant probably goes against the whole purpose if it.

I seem to have the same recollection as you with this. There was an eviction in which this scumbag of a woman had messed the landlord around for ages, all went to court and he turned up with a bailiff and the guy from some landlord assistance group. They got her out, she took a few bits and pieces then the guy told the landlord that he had to retain the stuff for a couple of weeks or something like that, to give her time to remove them. He was properly pissed off. I'm sure there was another one whereby there was a cat involved as well.

You can't leave us hanging like this!

The rat appears to have resurfaced: http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/liverpool-banksy-artworks-including-white-13652961

Not tracked back as such but an interesting one on HUTH yesterday from 2014. Guy buys a house in South Wales for £47,000 and plans to spend £20,000 and 6 weeks doing it up. The EA advises it could be worth about £95,000. When they came back 18 months later he'd actually spent £75,000 ripping the whole place out and was now getting EA valuations of £100,000-£110,000 on a total spend of £122,000. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04gvrp1/homes-under-the-hammer-series-18-episode-34 32:00 for auction and 50:00 for the return visit.

Another example - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4688290/How-pay-mortgage-just-FOUR-YEARS.html

The problem with this kind of programme is that they are never what they are billed as and they never seem to ask enough questions or dig deep enough into the detail. In this one the Canadian couple said that they 'invested in funds', no detail of how they did this, how much, where the investment capital came from, etc. The same couple claimed that they partly did this by renting instead of being bogged down by the costs of owning a home. Later on in the programme the two lads in London are espousing the benefits of jointly owning a home as it's cheaper than renting! Then we come to the saver guy who claims that you can retire early, in twenty years, by saving 50% of your salary but ideally to aim for 75%. They never seem to question what sort of salary they are dealing with or how they would expect the average person earning £25,000 to do this, when they have bills to pay and mouths to feed. Pippa the peanut butter woman was asked how much money she has made and replied that the turnover was £3,000,000. Don't get me wrong, that's impressive but not the answer to the question that was asked. The 5-2 saving woman was simply saving £14,000 per year but putting a novelty twist on things. Possibly the only person I had any interest in was the guy selling potatoes on the internet for £4 a go! Selling between 120-150 per week.

I suspect that they'll lose a lot of people in the coming year(s) to IPTV offerings online. I read recently that there has been a crack down on the dodgy card sharing by SKY and a lot of people are switching over to IPTV. I think as the people with some technical knowledge move over that they'll also bring over some friends and family with them. The big media companies have had things their own way for too long and signed themselves up to some big money contracts. If they're services were a bit more fairly prices then more people might be tempted to stay with them, paying out £70/month for TV then £20 for a phone line and then more on top for broadband just isn't doable for a lot of people.

Don't bother, you won't get any thanks either way. She's seen HUTH and that's enough for her to make her decision!

I was ranting about the size of multipack items yesterday. If a Mars Bar is 50g and they advertise a four pack of Mars Bars why do you only get 4 x 40g bars in the pack? It winds me right up! If the standard unit is clearly defined and widely accepted then they shouldn't be permitted to pull this scam, unless the pack is clearly labelled to clarify that something different is being bought!

Sounds like airbnb to me. You sign up to that and get somebody to manage it for you.

It seems there are too many platforms, outlets and variables for there not to be problems. One thing would be to take everything back up to the property level, probably at the Land Registry, give everything a unique reference (they probably already have this) and anything to do with that property has to be logged and recorded at every stage. Failing that just carry on as it is with information, which is easily manipulated, all over the place.

Surely Rory, who works for Reeds Rains, didn't sell himself the house? https://www.reedsrains.co.uk/property/detached-house-for-sale-vicarage-fields-vicarage-road-crewe-cw1-id-200774926

I clicked on the article expecting a story of a young guy who had set-up his own business and bought a house. I read the article, laughed a little, noticed that there was no comments then headed straight here. HPC didn't fail! I'm surprised that nobody has yet sniffed out the location of the property though!

Two offers down and he's already gone £15k and £18k under asking price.

First thing I thought. Who's going to check you're NOT an illegal immigrant!

I thought the same at the time but it appears she's a bit of a player in the business world and invests in other things as well. So the comment might have meant 'in general' rather than after two pitches in Dragon's Den!