sammersmith

I've lived in a housing association place for the last 3 years, compared to about 10 years in private rental. The other residents complain the HA are bad at repairs, but I think they expect them to repair minor things that day/next day. The reality is that the HA triage work and handle water/heating problems before wear and tear. As an anecdote: my shower head was busted but still usable. A private landlord likely wouldn't have fixed it until the next tenancy but the HA did, although it took them 3 weeks to send someone. HA don't bother you for tenancy renewals, tenant inspection, LL mortgage revaluation, S21 threats, etc, etc. As long as you pay the rent then they leave you alone to live a peaceful life.

After September, surely? The taper from June -> September means properties under £250K (out of London FTBer and BTL-fodder types) will still be steam ahead, and even those pricier houses will still benefit from an increased nil rate. I'm personally not seriously approaching buying until October onwards. The mania will carry on right up to Sept 30th IMO.

I posted a while back about a house i was interested in that LR said was owned by the solicitors acting as executors of the deceased. They've been sporadically trying to sell it for 7 years and I recently discovered a (seemingly unnecessary) uplift clause was added, which presumably explains why they can't sell it. It looked to me like they don't want to sell but have to show they are making a genuine effort to sell. Seems proper dodgy but i don't know what anyone has to gain so if you could enlighten me from a legal perspective i'd be grateful :).

EAs will generally push the LL offer if they have the choice. The reason they give to the seller is that the LL already has finance / solicitors in place and can move swiftly. The reality is they likely hope to be selected for the rental management business in about 6 weeks time.

Oh i see. Well, as frustrating as it is i would sit out this boom. These are very standard terraces that are all over Manchester. There shouldn't be a bidding war for these. It's got to be solely landlords filling their fat boots while they're saving money on stamp duty. I can't see this continuing after September.

There's a 2 bed on the same road for £120K and still available https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/90486544#/ It's not as big as your link but is at least mortgageable. Ashton and surrounding areas (Droylsden etc.) look much cheaper than where i am in Salford, and i was always told Salford was the proper no-go part of Manc.

Mostly I just hate landlords and their letting agent enablers. They have too much ability to buy and a seemingly incessant need to keep buying everything and renting it back to people. The mechanisms to rein them in are rolled out achingly slow (S24 announced 2015 and full effects only now starting to be felt, tenant fee ban similar timeline) and where they screw up even their own lax standards there seems to be plenty of forgiveness. You simply can never win a battle with a landlord if they can respond with a S21 for any or no reason. Not only that but they dangle the threat of a S21 over your head to ensure you comply with (unnecessary) contract renewals and increases. It annoys me when I hear talk about stopping 'rogue' landlords as IMO they're all dodgy, it's just some are more dodgy than others.

Access pension early for house purchase. This has been floated a few times. It's game over for HPC if that happens IMO. A lot of people i know have decent pensions but have no hope of owning in London, so would jump at this.

You could make it for an auction property. I've actually seen auction sites use this in their advertising (you CAN make make the March stamp duty deadline for properties in this auction) so I expect them to be bidding off the wall even more than usual.

So, if i understand this, he won't let her live with him without her paying part of his mortgage and she won't pay anything unless she has a legal stake in his house. In the past this kind of behaviour between partners would be considered mercenary, but it seems quite common nowadays and is IMO another side effect of insane housing costs.

Replies in this thread are interesting, and seems to suggest sentiment is beginning to turn. https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/property/4210911-to-wait-for-this-crazy-market-to-calm-down-or-buy-asap I'm worried that prices will continue rising and we'll never buy anywhere and also the SD saving is definitely appealing to me but dh thinks we'll be better off waiting until that's over. Have to say I agree with DH, but I bet he's getting some flack from her that they'll be priced out forever if they don't act now! Seems most people are still caught up in the mania even if they know it's unsustainable.

Very typical built for the 'landlord market' flat. No owner-occupier would choose or accept that kitchen and bathroom for their new build home. I suspect the whole development was originally marketed on yield estimates, and the 'victims' on this development are all landlords. In these cases i'm torn as i'd quite like to see both the landlord and the developer shafted.

I have started reading MSE and Mumsnet. I hate their self righteousness however, unlike here, they are a good indicator of mainstream sentiment. Before the SD extension there were threads and threads about pulling out / reducing offer / etc if they can't meet the deadline. A lot of the posters said that they were only moving now as they'd never have access to that kind of money to pay for stamp duty. I get the impression money burns holes in their pockets. It's all quiet there now but I'm interested to see what happens come August when the final final SD deadline taper is imminent.

I know someone on furlough from an airline. The airline has cut her route and she accepted that there's no chance she's ever returning to her old job now. So much so that she's actually started working at Costa on the sly. Why does the airline keep her on furlough when it's pretty obvious she's never going back? I wish i knew, but my guess is that they're just kicking the can down the road and hoping tomorrow is brighter. That or incompetence. I suspect a similar situation is being played out in many businesses.

This period reminds me of 2014 in London. People queuing around the block to view crummy 1 bed mum+pop conversions. Estate Agents insisting on only accepting offers that used their in-house brokers. It was boom time then too but it didn't last. The buyers of those flats in 2014 now have kids and are stuck as they can't move up and out. The daft ones who bought shared ownership in new build blocks are even more screwed. I fully expect this boom to go the same way. It feels totally artificial. It has been given urgency by the stamp duty holiday and people trying to move before redundancy destroys their chance of qualifying for a mortgage. It's annoying for me as I do really need to move, but buying into this craziness just isn't an option that i'm willing to accept.

Access to your money Only when your term ends otherwise a charge will apply I’ve noticed nationwide’s newer products have introduced penalties for early access. Another example of this is their member bond. Previously they’d drop your interest for the remainder of the term if you exceeded 3/4 withdrawals. This was reasonable but their products nowadays seem desperate to keep your money tied up. I’d not touch any product that hit you with a fee for early access, and especially not for sub-1% interest.

Everyone (even the people buying) know this. I don't think even the government has been as blatant to say it doesn't increase prices, instead they typically just deflect the answer to 'enabling hard-working families get on with their lives' or some other such soundbite. Why do people buy knowing this? I always assumed people look at price increases that happened before they purchased and picture a nice linear increase that they can cash in on later. Have a look on Mumsnet and MSE and you'll see many threads of 2nd hand HTBers failing to sell. No one wants to pay full price for a (2nd hand) new build with no subsidy, especially when there's plenty of new-new build houses available with HTB - probably on the same estate!

This house sold for £225,000 in 2019. Crap town or not, they still demand £45K for sitting on their backsides for 2 years even if a global pandemic happened in the meantime.

The main thing that keeps me going is that the insane optimism of today feels exactly the same as it did in summer 2007, right before the world blew up.

Every under 40's person i know in London that isn't renting has bought a new build flat (with cladding) and (usually) through Shared Ownership. If they want to cash in and move out then they'll need someone to buy them out. Now more than ever i really don't know who they plan to sell to.

I'm actually seeing the opposite i'm afraid. Bloke in the office was chuffed his over (massively inflated) asking price offer was accepted. There's also another property i saw that owners been trying to shift since 2018 with no takers. Went SSTC today. Stamp Duty extension seems to have given the market another short-lived turbo boost. I'm personally steering well clear till September.

Looks like a guarantor mortgage packaged up as a way for students to feel like smug slumlords. Plenty of people i knew at uni did something similar. Parents had a BTL mortgage but their DS / DD collected the rent for the rooms and paid their parents the mortgage money, while skimming off the excess for beer tokens. Parents usually swallowed the voids when the other students drop out, left for the summer, or shacked up with someone mid-term. In 2/3 years they've then got the issue of selling their knackered terrace in Preston when DS / DD wants to move to London after uni.

I thought this too - however then I wondered if a £50K BB payment would pass the proof of funds/anti-money laundering checks that will be required when approaching a solicitor. IIRC a BB loan can't be used for this purpose.

Seeing it laid out like this really brings home how pampered LLs are. S24 was announced by Osbourne in 2015. It didn't start to roll out for another 2 years and was a full 6 years from announcement to full implementation. The amount of notice they've had is sickening. I can think of no other policy that has given those impacted so much time to adjust. The fact that most seem to have doubled-down on BTL rather than sell up is their own stupid fault. No one can say they didn't have ample warning.

Nationwide just raised their top ISA rate from 0.25% to 0.4%. I nearly fell of my chair when I got that email yesterday. It’s still a terrible rate but nationwide went a bit crazy with the rate cuts last year and this is the first I’ve seen of any provider increase their rates since the covid rate cut