If you haven’t read the previous post that defines the work that needed doing please do. It’ll probably make this post make more sense to you.

So other than the problems that were defined in the last post, I didn’t like the colours. It wasn’t urgent at all but it made sense to get everything done in one go. So this is what we asked Dinesh and his team to do: -

Hallway

• Paint walls
• Paint ceiling
• Paint woodwork
• Fill holes/make good where the baby gate had been

Doors

• Paint all them so that they were uniform, rather than, some having the natural wood effect whilst others were white.
• Fit one 8 glass panel door to make all the doors downstairs the same

Lounge

• Paint walls
• Paint ceiling
• Paint woodwork
• Fill holes/make good
• Treat cold wall
• Make good wall where it’s bubbled up – rising damp

Outside

• Add drainpipes to rear bedroom
• Fix dripping drainpipe. I forgot to mention that in the previous post! This was adding to the issue of rising damp.
• Add air vents x2

Kitchen

• Paint walls
• Paint ceiling
• Paint woodwork
• Fill holes/make good

Bedrooms x3

• Paint walls
• Paint ceiling
• Paint woodwork
• Fill holes/make good

Bathroom

• Fill gaps and paint ceiling

Office

• Paint walls
• Paint ceiling
• Paint woodwork
• Fill holes/make good

Other bits and bobs

• Change the lock on the front door
• Remove sealant from windows and make them look better

Nothing was too much! They delivered a high standard of work and you didn’t need to ask for it! If something came up they managed it. For example they went over and above the work quoted for by sanding the doors down to ensure that they opened and closed properly after they painted them. (They were uneven before.)

When the rooms were completed the radiators looked naff because they were discoloured so they painted them.

They fitted a shelf which was previously perched on a box.

They also fitted new sockets and light switches for us.

Dinesh provided 3 men for about 7 days and 2 men on 2 of the days. 9 in totla and the house looks and feels much better!

Here are some photos alongside his email address, in case you want to get in touch with him.

Dinesh – dpd725@hotmail.co.uk

When we moved into our new home, I was really chuffed!

We knew there was an issue of rising damp that we agreed to deal with but other than that, everything was pretty much sorted!

Well…so we thought! We moved in, unpacked boxes, boxes and more boxes! We were beginning to settle in. My father in law came over and Suraj showed him around our home.

I must admit Suraj wasn’t too worried about the stuff that my father in law shared but I heard some of it and had a sinking feeling inside. I couldn’t leave it there as I knew that I’d need to know what it was if we were going to discuss it later and then act on it. So I asked him what he was noticing and I was gutted! In a nut shell he said that: -

• the downstairs shower couldn’t be used as a lot of the grout was missing. This would cause the water to end up where it shouldn’t be and we’d be in trouble! He said it was urgent! He’s in the business. He knows what he’s talking about so to hear this from him, I was more than worried! We’d been using the shower as the other shower had apparently ‘blown up’ some months before we purchased the house. (That’s what we were told.)
• the room smelt of clothes that haven’t dried properly because of us using the shower with the grout missing
• the rising damp in the lounge wasn’t huge but would need treating. We knew about this one.
• he said that the black stuff in the corner of the other side of the lounge was due to moisture on the cold wall. It needed washing and painting. Again, nothing huge!
• the handle on the door leading to the garden was loose.
• the lever mechanism that’s used to work the tap in the kitchen sink wasn’t secure. We later discovered it wasn’t designed for that tap! They’d found any old lever and used it until now.
• the T and G ceiling in the bathroom looked awful and needed sorting
• the fans probably weren’t strong enough in the bathroom/toilet so that needed to be checked out
• he said that the electric certificate wasn’t complete but he’d check it out later

We later realised that the handles on the doors leading to the bathroom and toilet weren’t fitted properly! I struggled to open the door and if I closed it, I struggled to get out! My father in law fixed that. It hadn’t been fitted properly!

When we cleaned, we realised that some windows still had the plastic seal around it. The type you get on a new phone. When we removed these strips plaster started coming away with it.

When the snow was melting we heard drip, drip, drip throughout the night. This is because 2 owners prior to us had sourced a ‘cheap’ double glazed window. It was too tall for the existing space which meant that there wasn’t enough plastic at the top to fit the guttering to. Hence they removed the existing guttering and never replaced it!

The electrics! The certificate was only completed for some of the electrics in one of the rooms. My father in law checked it out and the previous owners hadn’t correctly earthed 2 out of the 4 sockets. Thus they couldn’t be used! Did I mention that the previous owner was an electrician!

The rising damp was caused by 2 of the 3 air vents being blocked when the previous owners added paving to the garden. Doh!

There were cracks at either side of 2 bay windows which ran from the bottom of the sill down to the ground. Not sure how we missed that when we came over prior to buying it.

The windows looked like they’d not been cleaned. The decorators said they’d been stuffed with silicone sealant before cleaning which had trapped the existing dirt and meant it couldn’t be cleaned unless the sealant was removed.

So we got some quotes and went with a gent called Dinesh. He and his team were great!

Look out for my next post which will have photos of the completed work.

So I’ve written about our long journey in finding this house. Here’s what happened once the formalities had been done.

We were all set to move by early November or late October. We didn’t move until 10th December. Here’s why…

The seller found out that he couldn’t move until 26th November at the earliest, because their ’new’ mortgage didn’t allow them to move within 6 months of the start date of the renewed mortgage.

We accepted that. Everything was going to plan until the solicitor called and said that the sellers haven’t got an electrical certificate, paperwork for the extension that they built, certificates for the double glazing etc.

The seller spent a good week looking for the paperwork only to find out that when he got the extension built, he was meant to submit the electric certificate to the council. He missed the deadline. The result of this was they didn’t release the paperwork that approves the building work. He’d been looking for it but he didn’t have it!

I think he had to get the electric certification done again.

Luckily he found the double glazing certificate.

He had been in hospital after having an operation and was then admitted with pneumonia.

We felt so bad for them. He was unwell. His Mrs. was heavily pregnant & all parties wanted this deal to be made as the people who the sellers were buying from were going away. If we didn’t complete before they left, we’d all have to wait for a good few weeks!

We had the fixtures and fittings but there were things on there which didn’t make sense. Luckily, Peter from Reel Estates did a lot of work to get clarification about those  things to speed things up.

The place that the sellers wanted to buy was viewed as poor choice by their parents when they went to look at it. They realised that they were being emotional, rather than, logical so they pulled out. Luckily they found another property within a week so that didn’t hold things up.

We thought we were on track but then we learned that there was no mortgage offer! The seller had assumed that the mortgage offer was in hand and it would be issued on 26/11/10 but it hadn’t been authorised at all.

After a lot of work that Peter (from Reel Estates) and the seller put in, it became clear that when the seller had called about his mortgage before, he was told that he could scan some documents in and send them by email. This had been agreed by someone who hadn’t checked with the underwriters and they weren’t having it! Had he known, he would have submitted the documents by post but he didn’t know so we were none the wiser.

After the seller sent the documents we had to wait for the solicitor to get them, check them and then agree to set a date for exchange.

Then it became apparent that the depth of the extension had not been verified by the council. Thus we didn’t know if we’d be able to build on it! (If we wanted to one day.) We had to wait for that to be sorted out.

It felt like there was one thing after another and perhaps, we’d end up not buying this property because everything seemed to be against it.

Finally, everything came together. We agreed and executed the exchange on Monday 6th December and completed on Friday 10th December.

Phew!

I’ve heard about couples who looked at one property, fell in love with it, purchased it and that was the end of it. Our story is a bit nuts in comparison.

We started looking for our new home about a year ago. We wanted to be somewhere that was near parks, close to a tube station, in London but you wouldn’t necessarily feel it & amongst other things, had a large enough lounge for us to invite the family over without feeling cramped. When we get together, there’s over 25 of us.

So we looked at a few places and we fell in love with a house in Bushey. It was gorgeous! We got a survey done. We were ready to proceed BUT many people kept telling us not to go for it because it was a town house. Town houses are fine but this one had the lounge and kitchen on separate floors so the concern was; ‘how will you manage serving drinks & food to guests’, ‘what about when you have kids’ etc. A friend told us, you don’t buy a house for when your kids are young as that lasts for only for a few years. See beyond that. Thus we looked at the pros and cons and how WE felt about it. We decided to carry on with the purchase because we thought it’d be fine.Then for some reason, we caved. We kept hearing the same thing. Also transport was a bit of an issue in that we’d need to get 2 buses to the closest tube station. So we pulled out. We felt SO bad but we had to do it. Suraj and I felt sad but free. Almost as if we were burdened by our choice and letting go of this house was a good decision.

After this we found another house that we really liked. We made sure we weren’t being emotional, we created a check list of things that we wouldn’t compromise on, we went back to view it at different times of the day etc. It was great! We put an offer in, we got a survey done and then we waited to find a buyer for ours. We found a buyer, called the agent and he’d sold it without calling, texting or emailing us! That’s a lot of different ways that the agent could have communicated with us but he chose not to! He could have written too but nope!

We now needed to find a property because we had a buyer who was ready to move ASAP. We saw more houses, created a short list, went back to see them again & we liked 2 of them, A LOT! One of them was perfect in terms of layout, the wiring that had been done (hidden), the decor and more but the area wasn’t what we wanted. We liked another but when we went for a walk around the house, both of us struggled to breathe because of the pollution from the A40. I don’t remember ever feeling anything like it!

We found another house. We asked my father in law to check it out. He told us about the work it needed but said it’d be a good buy as long as we could get them to reduce the price. We got a survey done and it showed that it was riddled with issues which needed repair. My father in law had based his findings on a quick tour of the house. The surveyor had longer so he delved deeper and the report was not good. So we retracted our offer and explained why. The sellers couldn’t reduce the price to what we needed in order to pay for the repairs so we let it go!

We found another house which was gorgeous downstairs but upstairs, the rooms were very small. Suraj & my father in law were concerned about how busy the road was too.

Then we found the house which we’ve now moved in to.

Se my next post on 14th January 2011 to find out how the purchase itself went…

Reel Estates have been on our journey of buying and selling from very early on.

We were in contact with 2 members of staff in particular. Brian and Peter. A few months into  our journey, we developed a good relationship with Gary and Christine too.

Here’s what worked well for us. Some of these things saved us a lot of strife too!

• They were willing to advise us about offers on our flat that were made through other agents. Really and truly, they had nothing to gain by helping us. No commission. They gained our trust but they sacrificed their time. the best part is they didn’t mind!
• There was a guy who viewed our property through another agent. He came over again (alone), dropped off a letter expressing interest in our flat and making an offer. The thing is, he wanted to keep it a secret from the agents ‘to save us fees’! I got on the phone to Reel and was advised to tell the agent because he’ll use it as leverage to get us to drop the price so we wont really save in the end. Also we’d be vulnerable and would have to pay the fees anyway! All the agent would need to do is prove that they introduced us to the buyer once the purchase was completed. We’d then get hit with a fee and if we’d reduced the price too; we’d be at a huge financial loss! (Note shown below)
• When we were bidding for other properties, Brian and Peter went out of their way to help us in our approach with the agent representing the sellers .
• They kept on finding properties for us and understanding what we truly wanted so they could match our needs perfectly!
• They made sure they came back to us with a response when we left messages or sent emails. Nothing was left pending!
• They brought LOADS of potential buyers to our flat, when other agents barely got anyone through the door. They didn’t trick the viewers in any way. They were upfront, told them it was an ex local flat, expressed the fab condition it’s in, painted a real and full picture of the area, making sure they explained things that the viewer would need to know e.g. the other entrance/exit to Pinner tube station which is open during peak hours, schools, the local library, the High Street, the fabulous parks and more.
• When the flat was about to sell it was Peter who warned me about the fact that we could get hit with dual fees! Why? ‘Golds’ introduced the buyer to us but when we went multi agency, we didn’t continue with them. The buyer then made another offer through ‘Hounds’. This situation would entitle BOTH agents to their commission! Click here for more info about what happened.
• Peter didn’t just mention it once. He mentioned it again as the sale progressed.
• Peter also gave us a number of a solicitor who specialises in contract. This solicitor was amazing! He knew his stuff and told us the bad news very quickly. We would definitely be liable for dual fees!
• When we finally found a place, the place we’ve not moved in to; they went the extra mile to make the completion date sooner, rather than, later.
• They made calls to the seller, both of the solicitors, the mortgage companies and more.
• They found out information, answered queries, helped process forms and so much more.
• If we’d waited for the solicitors to do all of that it would’ve been ages and there would have been a large hole in our pocket and the seller’s pocket too!

I cannot sing their praises enough.

You read the title! ‘Selling a property is easy. Agents wants commission and try their best to make a sale!’ Do you know anyone who really, truly, fully feels that this is an accurate statement?

I’ve provided a summary of what happened to us below and I’ve added links to posts that’ll shed more light. More detail. The reason that this might be important for YOU is if you come to sell a property, it’s good to be aware of the stunts that some agents pull. Our story may save you money, time, anxiety & stress.

So…here’s our story. Suraj and I were involved with one agent in the beginning. Click here to find out about the initial stages re selling our flat.

We had a lot of interest early on but things kept going wrong. We then got involved with a number of different agents. This didn’t make it easier! It did NOT increase the competition between them and help us make a successful sale. Click here to find out how things went wrong.

THEN it got worse! We had a sale, it was going through and we were going to get hit with DOUBLE fees! Now here’s where the competition kicked in! None of the acting agents made us aware of this dual fee. In fact, Hounds made a point of trying to trick us, pretend it didn’t apply to us and make the sale go through. Once that happened, we’d be stuffed! Click here to read the full story.