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Antsy

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Posts posted by Antsy

  1. Bizarrely enough, there are only 3 bed apartments left from this development. All the 1 & 2 beds got snapped up almost straight away. True what you say about a garden though.

    http://www.landmarkhousing.org.uk/property.php?ref=64

    Absolutely - but for 850 to about 950 (cheaper than this works out) I could rent a 3 bed terrace with garden in a quiet road. Once you have kids it's a no-brainer, unfortunatley, regardless of the financial implications. I think they'd rather be happy running free than be crammed into a box (of which they will recieve a share when we pop our clogs), so that's what we have to go with.

    Probably why they can't shift a 3 bed like this...

  2. Fatal flaw of shared ownership is that they only seem to build one and two bed apartments (certainly in London) . So you are stuffed if you either have or are planning a family of more than one child as you won't be able to afford to move 'up'. And few have a garden so said kid will be right under your feet and full of pent up energy constantly, which doesn't make for a happy family. I'm a teacher and I said I'd never touch shared ownership owing to the 'own half, pay all the maintenence' factor. Having said that, the idea of some of the money paid out each month going into something that will benefit my family in future rather than a landlord's pockets is looking increasingly attractive as the HPC fails to materialise. Shame there are no 3 bed houses on offer.

  3. Yeah, great... the rent and mortgage payments will add up to about as much as you'd pay to rent it privately, and then you have to factor in being liable for any repair costs. Oh - and you'd better not have more than one child (or maybe two if you can guarantee they are gonig to be of the same sex so can share a bedroom until the age of 18) as you'll never be able to afford to move out to somewhere bigger. They'll be fat gits, too, as there's no garden to exercise in. Also forget normal 'family' living like ahving pets for the same reason. Unless you like tropical fish.

  4. Just to add my bit - we have had a similar problem for the past 3 years in our rented flat. Caused by condensation and lack of ventilation as the walls are about 2ft thick (they really knew how to build things in the 30s). The dehumnidifier should help a lot, but I look at it as being lucky that I didn't buy a place with chronic damp and now know how to spot all the signs so won't be hoodwinked into it. I agree - we have a baby and 2 yr old and sponging walls with bleach every 3 days is a real pain in the bum... Get out before the baby arrives!

  5. Don't go near Harringay Green Lanes or the 'Ladder', no matter how attractive the EA tries to say it is. The place is the centre of the heroin trade in London, and while unless you decide to get mixed up in this you are likely to be left well alone, we had a stabbing on our doorstep and a couple of years ago there was a running gun battle in the road (just after we moved out, thankfully). The only person to die in that was a bystander...

  6. I have waited and waited, for a crash. Never happened. So i finally decided to buy and have recently got my keys to my new home. The house is in good condition, in need of decorating, but its a dream house for me with much potential. It has 3 bedrooms and a massive and i mean massive loft room, 25 feet long, 20 feet wide!! I paid 104'000 for it, so will be paying back 477 a month for the next few years as its fixed. Thats easily mangable.

    My advice is a crash may happen, but its not likely and prices are in fact more likely to keep rising than falling. SO get on the property ladder now if you can.

    Erm... is it just me, or why are you posting this news on a site dedicated to discussing economic indicators of a housing bubble and so forth for people either priced out of owning anywhere near where they work or at least deeply suspicious of stretching themselves to the limit?

    So, you have managed to buy a house, it's big, and you can afford it because you live in a relatively cheap area and earn more than the local average. Good for you. Now, why don't you go off and post about your excellent health on a website for multiple sclerosis sufferers or the like? I'm sure that news will be equally as relevant as this is to us and you will be made to feel equally welcome. Goodbye.

  7. when my son was in nursery 3 days per week it was costing about £600 per month. I could have rented him a one bed flat for that, if only he could have learned to change his own nappies and use a can opener...

    Regarding having to pay back Tax Credits - keep ringing them to discuss why you might have been overpaid until you get a person on the end of the line who sounds like they might actually be able to spell their own name (there are about 2 of them in the call centre). Then go through absolutely everythnig with them. We were told we'd been overpaid by 4k last year, but actually when we'd rung to say we were cutting our childcare hours (while wifey was on maternity leave with No2) some ham-fisted git had applied the reduced hours to the whole of the past year rather than from that point onwards. hence the spurious demands for cash. All sorted now (I hope)

  8. Know a family like this, £100K gross pa wages (one working), always broke and in a bit of trouble, reasons as follows: new extention 45K, attic extention 58K (could have been half this but wanted trendiest and exclusive fitout) daughters bedrooms re barbie doll image (maybe £5K spent), 2 cars (must be new every 3 years) £12 and £20K each, average resturaunt to them is approx £100 for 2 and this is at least once a week with babysitter, all of this is on various credit cards and loans, the house and extentions are on mortgage, they were lucky and bought house for £120K before boom, now worth £450K+ and have paid nothing off in 10yrs and they moan incessantly about not making enough money, consider themselves to have a below average lifestyle, cant afford holidays (£6K+ last time to caribean) they deserve to be made bankrupt and the banks that pander to them deserve to lose their money. Absolutly clueless.

    Is their surname 'Millard"?

  9. Oh what a clever idea. And would you then tax all assets that a person or company owns?

    And who ever said that rents were unfair at the moment anyway? Most people say it is cheaper to rent than buy

    It's a slightly different thing as shelter is a basic human right. You are right that it is cheaper to rent than buy at the moment, but it doesn't make it fair. Rents are still crippling in many areas for those on average incomes, especially those with children on a single or one and a half incomes. Compared to rents across Europe, conditions in the Uk are ridiculous - no security of tenure and prices are very high.

  10. Is it?

    There are certain mortgage conditions - you can only go with certain lenders and their "approved" products.

    Nationwide, Yorkshire and Bank of Scotland will all charge the Bank of England base rate plus 1% for five years (so 5.75%). Advantage will charge 5.59% in the first year, then 6.59% in the second, rising to the London inter-bank offered rate in year three, which is currently 7.25%. :blink:

    IMO, I think you would need to be brainless to take them up on the offer.

    Quite so - the rates are high and are also vulnerable to the inevitable rises in interest rates that are on the cards. To answer another point - I'm a teacher and between the wife and I we earn around 39k. Even with this deal and what I would consider a pretty decent family income we can't afford a small terrace in a cheap and grotty part of SE London - and I don't mind cheap and grotty as it's all I'm used to! So, this is all okay if you are single but presumably you can't have the deal more than once, meaning it will price you out of being able to have a family (unless the kids are happy to sleep under the stairs or in the kitchen/diner secton of your 'studio').

  11. Again, I am only talking about what I see on the shared ownership schemes as I work with lots of keyworkers.

    But the homes they are buying are new build 2 and 3 bedroom semi detached houses on nice new estates. If you are a key worker and can get on this scheme then they are perfect starter family homes. You do have the option of 1 bedroom homes or flats but its up to you.

    I've been looking for a 3 bed S-O in SE London for 18 months now but they're not building anything bigger than 2 beds. They've been desperately trying to attract more men - especially aged 30 plus career changers - into teaching but somehow it doesn't occur to them that such blokes tend to be the family breadwinner when kids come along. Typical salary for someone in mid-30s is about 35k (staffroom survey based on 4 responses!). Can't get a 3 bed for less than 200k, I'd say (unless there's something seriously wrong with it).

  12. It is also only targeted at single people and childless couples - even with this, a small family ie 3 bed home is out of reach for people living in SE England (and please don't say 'why don't you move away then?' - someone has to staff the hospitals and schools, even though NuLab seem to think that only the recently trained should do this, hence the fact that there's a severe shortage of people taking up headteacher jobs in London...). so, if you have a family, you have to move away or if you want to stay, it's Victorian style overcrowding time. Great!

  13. Just found this little gem in the open market homebuy leaflet online. This is with the scheme launched next month where a building society and housing assoc give you a 25 per cent equity loan and you have to get a mortgage for the other 75% from one of about 4 participating lenders.

    "If your property has fallen in value, the amount you repay the HomeBuy Agent will always fall in value. However, the amount you must repay the lender could also fall in value, whilst some lenders will require you to repay the amount you originally borrowed."

    Looks like you will have to choose your building society carefully...

  14. My wife has been trying to find out about this as she will soon qualify. They are very cagey about how much rent you will actually have to pay. i.e. you virtually have to sign a contract and then you find out how much it costs afterwards. There is no actual information on this in the application procedure and the people organising the scheme at her work seem rather unorganised and clueless.

    I would like to know how much the rent is too.

    we qualify and yes, the amount you pay out is very similar to renting - if not more. For example, a two bed flat in Lewisham (from current Housing Options website...) is 288 pcm to rent, service charge 119, 40 per cent share costs 77,000. So, a mortgage on that at 5 per cent interest over 25 years (repayment - none of this interest only bullocks) is 455 per month. Total - £862. A two bed in the area can be rented for £750 to £800 and okay, so these are new build BUT... just off Lewisham high street in a very polluted area next to a busy railway line. No garden or anything. no wonder the affordable housing people can't get rid of them. Remember also that interest rates are at a historic low so the amount you cough up will doubtless rise in future.

  15. Woman I once worked with told me she looked round a house in Wandsworth owned by an old couple. said it would have been a good buy as it was full of chintz so undervalued. However, she couldn't bear to look at more than the entrance and living room owing to the all pervading stink of boiling kippers they were having for breakfast. Basset hounds are a good borrow - they honk to high heaven. Both would be particularly good for 'family houses' as ten to one the female half of the couples looking round will be pregnant so very smell-sensitive (keep bucket handy in case she tries to be sick on your rug - don't want to lose the deposit :) )

  16. Approaching mid-30s, retrained as a teacher two years ago so am paid a bit more than someone entering as a graduate, wife a part-time journalist, 2 kids. Should be able to afford a slightly cramped 3 bed terrace in a reasonably grotty part of London with middling drug abuse issues and a surfeit of fast food emporia such as Sydenham or Penge. In reality I am about 100k short of what I need. (50k if you count the current government keyworker bribe)

  17. Another example of her poor financial planning - if she has given up breastfeeding, it will cost her about £500 in formula milk for little Anna-Maria's first year. Bet that won't help the budget. And if she thinks she'll ping back into shape within a month, she's got another thing coming.

  18. rubbish . i don't earn £50k, bought on my own & bought a [erfectly respectable 2 bed flat in reasonable area last year for under £200k

    try and complete just before xmas with people in no chain, who really need to move. you can chip the price.

    Unless you had a massive deposit, I bet those repayments are a struggle, though. Doesn't it worry you that such a huge chunk of income is going on the mortgage? Our rent is 800pcm, which is the same as borrowing about 125-130k. Wouldn't want to go any higher than that on the repayment front (joint income just under 40k...). Our situation is that we can get a 50k equity 'loan' from the government but the rules for that say you can only borrow three times joint income, giving us a budget of about 165k. Four years ago that would buy a three bed terrace in Penge or similar (not great but passable). Now I have no idea where you could get a 3 bed for so little. We have two children by the way (boy and girl so can only share a room for about 7 years tops), so buying a two bed would be a complete waste of money. We'd have to move again in about 5 years so that would mean two lots of stamp duty, moving fees etc. Okay if the market continued to rise 5% a year as this would cover it. But...

  19. Yonks ago I remember there being a post here about a couple of academics who wanted input from people who had been priced out - they were doing some sort of study into the effects of housing hyperinflation. I was spouting off about this in the pub but can't remember anything else about it (such as which Uni was involved) - does anyone have a better memory than I? Thanks! Link appreciated. Ant.

  20. It seems strange that some people are prepared to offer more than the asking price whilst previously complaining that this drives up house prices. I am thinking of advertising the house in London as strictly for FTBs and BTL can bugger off. I wouldn't be surprised if I end up with £100k and the buyer thinking he has a bargain. I will then tell him there are similar properties in the neighbourhood also for sale around the £65k mark so he hasn't got a bargain after all.

    The trouble with HPC is that it is filled with Londoners who think England ends at Watford when it doesn't. It is still quite easy for a FTB on a £20k salary to get on the housing ladder if they know where to look.

    Shame that quite a few people can't move their job from London, though - might be a bit more difficult to buy the house with no income at all therefore(well, there are probably mortgage brokers that could still sort that for you, however...)

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