Housey

[kingandy]

So I'm looking at houses that myself and bacony can view on Saturday. What do you suppose "Viewing Recommended" means? Does it mean it's a shithole? It looks it from the photo.

Then there's this one, but I'm not sure exactly where that is.

Then I got bored and went back to Livejournal.

Comments

houses

[ajon.livejournal.com]

I think the second one is somewhere near Gemma's and Paul's house.

Re: houses

[pkgem.livejournal.com]

Yes, Al is correct, it is.
Paul and I live in Great Lever, BL3 3ED. The house is in Great Lever, BL3 3EA - that has to be close.
Move there! Now! OK, maybe you'll want to check the area first. I mean, not all of Great Lever is as nice as the estate where Paul and I live. Saying that, you currently live in Levenshulme... Saying that, you rent there - not own. Have a look - you can always pop in for a cuppa while your in the area.

Recomendation - if you have time to spare. Paul and I looked for houses by finding areas we wouldn't mind living in (and guessed we might be able to afford) and then walked around them and rung the estate agents on all the "For Sale" signs of houses we liked the look of. We eventually founds ours by it being recomended to us by an estate agent who was showing us around another house - it was old and he could tell we weren't really committed to the repairs and unlikely to purchase so he recommended us a fairly new house that was just outside the areas we'd been looking in but turned out to be our new home.

[kneeshooter]

Houses are cheap in your part of the world then?

[kingandy]

Findings may be biased by the way I'm looking for cheap houses, but yeah, it's possible to buy a 2-bedroom house for less than 60K... Comes of living outside London.

And in Bolton.

[renniek.livejournal.com]

Comes of living outside London.

And in Bolton.

Yeah, you can't get a 2 bedroom house for <£60K in Didsbury. Or anywhere between here and Stretford. Bolton's cheap.

[stsquad.livejournal.com]

I suppose I should thank Max for the one thing that she made me do. You could alway consider buying with a friend? Its becoming more common and if you pool resources you can get a nicer place.

[kingandy]

While it's excellent in the short-term, I'm apprehensive about what would happen if one of us wanted to move away. More binding than marriage, or so I'm told.

[kneeshooter]

Depends on the relative amounts of money (mortgage/salary) and the career expectations.

It can work out - just think about it...

[kingandy]

Yeah, I don't know ... essentially what I'm doing now is getting a mortgage that is wholly mine, but I probably couldn't afford without Katy's input. It's a bit like a joint mortgage except the house belongs entirely to me, so if she leaves I only have to find somebody to cover the rent and don't have to worry about buying off her share or whatever.

[stsquad.livejournal.com]

These things are sorted out before you buy. Usually is agreed you can have your capital brought out (i.e. your share of the initial mortgage) and the house valued for the rest of the money when sold. An other option is agree to sell after a few years. The most important thing is to agree on what people will do *before* you buy a house.

Remember after 3-4 years you should all be beter off anyway and you can use existing capital as a basis of securing loans for a new house.

See http://www.bbc.co.uk/homes/property/buying/buying_with_friends.shtml for some details

Its just an option but worth at least considering....

[renniek.livejournal.com]

I can probably just about afford a mortgage on my own, once I've paid off some of my debt mountain. Just trying to dispel the myth that everywhere outside London is cheap.

[nattydreadi.livejournal.com]

Viewing recommended tends to mean 'looks like a shithole outside but is really nice inside'

If you want to avoid doing work on the house to start avoid things that say 'investment opportunity' or 'has character'

[richc.livejournal.com]

The worst thing they ever say is 'in need of some modernisation' which means there are no floors ;-)

[arwel.livejournal.com]

I think ours said that

[redhillian.livejournal.com]

Do you have floors yet? ;)

[richc.livejournal.com]

'Viewing recommended' means that it it relatively clean and the current inhabitants are vaguely presentable ;-).

Both of those seem to be clones of Nook and Sams houses.

[kingandy]

Ah, that's the conclusion I was slowly coming towards - if it was a shithole they wouldn't advise you to view it because they want to sell it. I was operating under the misconception that they would advise people to check things out to make sure they weren't buying something they didn't want...

Note to self, Estate agents are not inherently nice.

They do look similar to S&N's, which is not really surprising... still, nice enough. Will ring for viewing probably.

[samharber.livejournal.com]

I suspect that Bolton has a higher density of terraced housing than anywhere outside of calcutta

[myki.livejournal.com]

You learn something new about Calcutta everyday.

Terreced housing

[spodula.livejournal.com]

Naah, try Queens drive, liverpool, Most of north liverpool is terresed housing.

Used to be Toxteth as well, but some enterprising young people converted them. (Actually i'm not sure if Firebombing one house in three so it has to be demolished counts)