Cyclemonkey

?250 a month for a one bedroom flat in Little Venice in 2000? Seriously? I rented in a house share in New Cross in 2000 and paid ?320 a month for a room in a rather old fashioned and tatty three bedroom thirties semi. Bills excluded.

The rules are often less to do with the pub and more to do with restrictions placed on them by the local licensing authority. If I recall most pubs locally licensed by Southwark have restrictions around children being on the premises in the evening. Pubs really can't make exceptions for sleeping children or distinguish between babes in arms and toddlers otherwise things become very complicated.

Isn't it to do with the fact that the Overground falls under TfL and the rail services to London Bridge are Southern Training a so the fare structures are different. To me that makes a case for all suburban rail within London coming under the management of TfL.

I also think it is perfectly reasonable. We have a housing crisis partly because of lack of supply. Now a lot of that is lack of building but also because the favourable treatment of housing as an investment incentives people to hold on to property rather than sell further constraining supply of the type of property first time buyers can afford. I bought last year and it was deeply depressing seeing everything you can afford being advertised as "ideal buy to let investment" and agents and vendors using "well we can always take it off the market and let it out" as a tactic to central higher offers.

Oh you would be able to tell if was fox poo believe me. It stinks worse than dog poo if that is possible.

Penguin the proposal is that the extra stamp duty will be levied on the purchase of ANY additional property over ?40,000. If you own a property you lived in and you De ide to buy another property to live in and let out the first property you are still buying an additional property.

Advice on the new stamp duty rates up thread was untrue. The focus was on BTL but the proposal is that a 3% extra stamp duty charge will be levied on second homes regardless of what they are used for. Therefore if the OP retains their existing flat and buys a new place to live in they would be treated as buying a second home under the new system proposed. I am not sure if the proposals will keep prices down for FTB but it is about time the very favourable tax treatment of property investment in comparison to other investments was ended. What it may also do is provide a disincentive for exactly what the OP is trying to do. One of the issues for first time buyers is constraint of supply and that is not helped by people retaining their starter flats to let out when they trade up in the hope of gaining later on from ever rising house prices.

Dog mess everywhere is an important issue. Not only is it messy and disgusting it can cause serious health problems including blindness, particularly in children.

Oh so what are you wanting to achieve? If you remortgage interest only you won't be paying off any of the capital anymore so are you relying on house price appreciation to build up equity? Secondly have you done your sums in terms of expenses? Have only recently stopped renting in East Dulwich I would say if it is a decent flat in a good location you would probably get around ?1,300 a month in rent. Out of that you have to pay the mortgage, agents fees, put aside money for essential repairs and maintenance and to guard against void periods and tax. Do your sums and see if you come out with much at the end of that. If you don't I can't see what you are trying to gain. The income stream probably won't be much and going interest only means you won't be paying off the mortgage. Are you simply holding on to it in the hope that value will rise and you will make more money selling it in several years time than now? That's a risky strategy and a lot of work for potentially modest equity gains. If I were you I'd sell and give yourself less work yo do and a better cushion of equity in your next home.

My sympathies to people caught up in this. I am astonished that the council replaces doors and windows for leaseholders. We are leaseholders in a private block and front doors to flats and windows are the responsibility of individual leaseholders to replace when they wish (with permission). I have to say we were torn between buying a flat with a small kitchen in a private block with share of freehold or an ex council flat with a much larger kitchen and an additional box room. Reading this i am very glad we went with the former as it looks like those extra few square feet could have cost us dear.

Well depends what properties you want. We wanted ideally a private purpose built flat and Brockley has a lot of period conversions that were too expensive for us. Most of the purpose built flats in Brockley seemed to be ex local authority and whilst we had not problem with these blocks my partner has been a local authority leaseholder before and was not keen to repeat the experience.

The one where you asked why people would move any further out than Deptford or Brockley. For many people ThosepPlaces are just as unaffordable as East Dulwich. We certainly couldn't find anything affordable in Brockley.

We got a letter from Lewisham Council today (I live in FH) and it just asked us to ring a number to confirm that the details they had for the people in our property who are eligible to vote is correct. I wonder if so. Eine else has registered using your address?

Ha ha did you really have to ask that question fazer? Price is the biggest issue and for many East Dulwich is completely unaffordable. We couldn't even stretch to a dingy ex local authority one bedroom flat in need of complete renovation in East Dulwich. Whereas in Forest Hill we get a two bedroom flat with garage in beautiful condition and in a lovely green location for less money.

I get the impression that the OP was interested in viewing it. I'm just rubber necking in astonishment at the asking price.

You need to call your gas distributor asap. How on earth did they get it off without causing a lot of damage and more importantly why on earth would anyone want it?

Hmm the roof was repaired recently with no damp now but they couldn't be bothered to re plaster and paint the affected walls before putting but on the market for 1.2million. Call me a cynic but anything that Foxtons describe as a development opportunity is going to need more than new carpets and a quick luck of magnolia paint.

If the cause of the damp is a leaking flat roof I would imagine that there will be significantly more water damage now than there was when those photos were taken.

It will be bought by an investor who will do it up for a profit or convert it into flats to let out.

No I'm not an estate agent, just someone who has spent too long being shown places by estate agents whose owners expect can good price but font expect to have to make the place at all presentable. To be honest if they want to get a million plus for it they do need to clear it out properly and deal with the obvious damp problem as any potential buyer is going to bargain hard on that. Also be wary of what they don't show. Kitchens and bathrooms are always of most interest to buyers as they cost a lot of money to put right. Given the quality of the rooms they have shown I fully expect the kitchen and bathroom to be total disasters.

I'd imagine it has been on the market for a while because it appears to be a damp infested shit tip with hideous carpets. At least two of the "bedrooms" appear to be pokey attic rooms with barely any light. It's also fairly ugly from the outside, the asking price of ?1.2 million is just insane.

I agree Otta. We paid around that for a very nice two bedroom flat with a garage on Forest Hill earlier this year. Miga i understand what you are saying but London is a constantly moving and dynamic city. People have to accept if they have fixed ideas about a particular location then that will affect the choice they have in terms of property. House buying for most of us is a series of compromises. House price inflation in London means we have to make more compromises and choices than most. This is a very good Illustration of why house price Inflation isn't good for anyone Homeowners or renters.

It does sound a little petulant I am afraid. At your age most people in London are still renting and haven't managed to buy their first place let alone their second. Yes you have a reasonable budget and yes it does not seem fair that you can't buy a house where you want for that. However that is the reality of the situation. You now have to decide what is more important location or space. East Dulwich is not the cheap and slightly dowdy suburb it was 15 years ago. I expect if it still was you wouldn't be living there. On your budget you can get a nice house in Catford or Bromley. Or you can stay where you are and upgrade to a larger flat. Your choice and to be honest be thankful you have the choice. Many of my friends a good few years older than you are moving out to areas you dismiss just to be able to afford a small flat.

Without knowing your budget it's tough to tell. We couldn't afford what we wanted in Peckham so moved to Forest Hill and we are very happy there but a house was still out of reach. We decided a large flat was a good compromise. You can get some houses in Catford for under ?500,000 but you'll have to be quick. Bromley is worth a look as is Beckenham.

Pat, we rented our flat from Acorn in East Dulwich and bought our current flat through Acorn in Forest Hill. Obviously we didn't have a choice in the agent but they were ok. The agents on the ground were helpful and keen to progress the sale so I assume that they might be Ok if you were choosing them to sell through.