OK, I've owned my own place before, and been without hot water before (and heating in the winter), but the difference is I haven't waited over a month before calling a heating engineer. I've also raised a complaint with HomeServe because they promise within 24 hour response and were expecting me to wait three days and then pay for the emergency call-out that my cover provided for. I didn't get the 24 hour response, but my boiler was fixed within 36 hours at no additional charge.
And being a landlord, I've bitten the bullet to pay for emergency call-out fees whereas for myself I could only afford to wait - it's what you do, isn't it?
Anyway, enough of that!
Will and Anita sold the flat at #31 just before Christmas - which was a bit of a shock - they'd been there just over three years, and we're still in "temporary" accommodation. I think they did what I'd planned to do 24 years ago: buy a first home, trade up within a couple of years, and then buy somewhere bigger.
The difference is, the property market in Brixton is still thriving (it's having it's own little bubble, from what I read) whereas I bought at the peak in 1989 and the market promptly crashed and the flat reduced in value by nearly 30%. Took ten years till it was valued at the level of the mortgage [and that meant nowhere near as much as I paid, as in those days the 95% or 110% mortgage hadn't been invented (how lucky was that for me?)]. In all the time I couldn't sell, I was still grateful as anything to be able to afford to live in such a lovely home, and (eventually) there was some equity, and that virtually paid for our house in France.
Diversion over. The market in Kent is still depressed, and vendors still haven't got the memo! We have seen some absolute dumps and about five properties that would pass the Ann Maurice test. We visited one home that hasn't been decorated since the 1980's (remember Coloroll?) and in a falling market had magically increased in
I know not everyone wants to decorate before selling or cannot afford to make necessary changes, but that's why the market has two prices: lovely house = top dollar; crappy house = fixer-upper price. What we are seeing is a lot of crappy house = top dollar, and it just doesn't add up!
I don't mind people having all sorts of unrealistic expectations about their homes, but I do mind them wasting our time - offering something for sale at a totally unachievable price wastes everyone's time, but the difference is that estate agents choose to let vendors do that whereas we know there are buyers out there just looking for a right-priced house. We (well, I) want a fixer-upper, but there's no way we are paying top whack for something that we couldn't sell in a hurry should we need to because we've overpaid by an enormous amount.
We saw one property that if we could have got it for (what even the agent admitted was) a reasonable price, we would be installed in our new home by now. Sadly, the vendors overpaid three years ago and have spent £65k doing it up [where that money went, there's no visible evidence - we could see about £20,000 worth of work, if you pay the "Everest price" for windows (rather than getting the half-that deal from a smaller firm), but again décor from the 1980's gives the game away that nothing other than that has changed. And now their asking price seems even more unlikely in the wake of the news that Chilmington Green is going to be the centre of an Ashford new town that will finish [for now, at least] a couple of hundred yards away from the house.
We're now regarding that house as a lucky escape.
I could tell stories like that all day. We have seen a few places that have sold - a couple were priced exactly right, and in really nice condition, and another one that came down in price by £200,000 over the last two years!
What I would like to offer is some advice to vendors: if you can't afford to decorate, at least go an buy some cleaning products and USE them.
If you can't afford to hit Superdrug or Sainsbury's, sell one of your flat-screen TVs [they go for at least £20 on eBay], and get to a pound shop - bleach, cream cleaner, Flash-alike, scourer, and rubber gloves will set you back £5, and may net you tens of thousands of pounds. At the very least it will dramatically increase your chances of a sale!
I know starving artists might live in conditions stinking of mold & dog p!ss [I remember a Lucian Freud exhibition that left me with that impression], but there's no need to try and sell a house in that condition unless it's a probate sale and you don't want much money for it. I'm fully prepared to go in there myself with the rubber gloves [and would welcome a place that needs work], but we won't pay the price for a "done" house if there's a danger that the urine we can smell has rotted/penetrated all the floorboards and we'll have to replace the floor. Some people, you get the feeling, live like that quite happily [we've seen three houses where the smell made me gag, so we know there are families like that out there], but make an effort, eh?
Oh, and artist [the only reason we know you are an artist is that the agent repeated it several time (as an excuse for the teenager-inspired colour schemes, we think?), so you must have emphasised it enough to them that it 'stuck'] at "April Cottage": air freshener doesn't mask the smell of canine incontinence - it only makes your reception room smell like a portaloo! And throw out that "doggy" rug!
And while we're at it: why on earth would you build an extension to create a dining room and laundry room and a) only has access to the laundry from outside, and b) place the dining room facing the car park and have the laundry as the only room in the downstairs of the house with a view of the formal garden and the sea? A tiny bit of thought could have had a dining room off a short hall (with a door to the laundry) from the kitchen and French windows onto the lovely knot garden [and the car park too, if you insist]? To fix it now would involve moving the French windows, installing a new opening and knocking down and rebuilding the internal walls, so a massive expense that could have been avoided. Where were your artistic sensitivities?
And why would you block up the old front door, so that the sunny terrace at the front of the house can only be accessed by going out and walking half way round the house, rather than being straight off the reception room?
OK, enough already!
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