melvininthepalace

just got mine last night for ?325.36, can anyone beat that?

be wary of buying an ex council place with southwark council as the leaseholder. I was hit with a 22k major works bill about 4 years back and it caused no end of heart ache. the estimates where all over the place and the quality of the work questionable, it seems the more money they spend the greater their cut i.e 10% I think. if I had my time over again I would probably avoid it. the vendors are probably selling as they know this is coming up and want out before the bill hits, this happening in the flat next to mine, the new tenents moved in and 3 months later got hit for 22k.

Hello Woodland, same thing happened to me a few years back for the sum of ?23k. I have taken out a loan with Southwark at 5% above the base rate over 25 years as it's the only way I can see of paying it back. My advice is get together with the rest of the leaseholders and get your local MP involved. The council will try and fleece you at every turn and are generally usless in my experience. Good luck and don't let the b**tards get you down....

has anyone mentioned to you about a mini coach load from north herts being organised? am looking into it but wondered if anyone else has the same idea?

Lived in Sydenham for 18 months till last year and never came across anything that would have put me off living there again were it not to be closer to family. We lived in the kirkdale area but was always down on the high street and never had any issues. My wife slightly misses it now in comparision to the burbs where we now live!

Hello, I feel for you as this happened to us in May 2011 when the council demanded ?23k from us for Major Works. All the works have been carried out now and the whole process was trying to say the least. We formed a group of leaseholders and had endless meetings with local councillors involved and pieces in the press etc and checked all of the works carried out and only managed to get a couple of grand at most of the final bill. The council will loan you the money at 0.5% above the base rate and I'll be paying that off for the next 20 odd years. In short you will have agree to this when you signed your lease as previously mentioned and you are stuck with it, it took me ages to come to peace with it but I can only hope the works will incrase the value of the flat when I come to sell it.