(no subject)
I've just sent a looooooong email update about the house purchase to my old uni friends and realised that I could cut and paste it here too. So here is the story of the dodgiest house in Thatcham....
Once upon a time there was a house. It was sixty years old, extended and warreny and Andrew loved the space and I could See The Potential, once it had new windows and a fireplace and all the rooms were painted. Most importantly it would fit all of our stuff. So we put in an offer and after a little wrangling it was accepted. This was in July. Nothing happened really until the end of August as it turns out that solicitors like to take their holidays long and often and so nothing happens.
Eventually the searches came back and the forms that the vendor was meant to fill in. Now this house sale is due to a marriage break-up, and the male resident didn't appear to really want to go, although he admitted that he was struggling to maintain the house any more (hence the fifty-year old windows and dodgy 80's wall colours. There may be woodchip paper still on the walls....) The information forms were certainly signed by him as there was a diagonal scrawl across one line, but it seems the forms were filled in by the soon-to-be-former Mrs Vendor, who managed to tell us that there was no conservatory and that it was built in 1976, amongst other things. I've looked and there definitely isn't even an invisible conservatory. There were other things like a comment that the property flooded three years ago - well, so did most of Thatcham - but there was no detail, and now that I think about it, no water authority for the sewage and drainage.
So we started sending a list of questions back to the solicitor and started getting very vague answers from their useless solicitor , or no answer at all (our solicitor has admitted that he's useless). Andrew went and googled 'Thatcham flood' and the very first youtube video was of someone boating down the road where the house that we may or may not buy is. So now he can tell you everything you ever wanted to know about the time that half of Newbury and Thatchm went underwater. Oh, and he's taught the Flood Forum a few things too, which is a little worrying. There was actually 9 inches of water that got into the house but as far as we can tell it was all mended properly. Of course this now makes the house almost uninsurable as it's still Less Than 400m From A Watercourse (or a culvert, but the insurance companies don't differentiate, so that they can run away more easily). And with this climate it could indeed flood again....
Then there was that other little problem that I sort of noticed and sort of didn't. In Kent we paid one water company for our water and one for our sewage/drainage. Job done. However Andrew actually properly read the Thames Water report and looked at the map and went "the sewer/drains that run under the house are un-adopted!" - literally. There is a main Thames Water-maintained sewer in the road, but the branch drains(?) that go under the houses are not maintained by ANYONE! Oh, and there's a three-way junction under the manhole in the back garden of The House, which, if the area floods again, would likely spray sewage all over the garden. Hmmm.
Naturally because it's an area with a flood history, the council, Thames Water and the housing association that still owns 1/3 of the houses in the area don't want to take on something that will be so much trouble. Um. Nor do we. So if we don't get answers and assurances that someone looks after those drains then we'll have to walk away, £800 quid poorer, but without taking on a property that could cost thousands to maintain and repair. We're a bit stuck at the moment, waiting for various organisations to come back to us with answers and for our solicitor to come back to Earth from wherever she's been for the last two weeks.
So it looks like we could still be in our assortment of spare rooms in another three months' time and still looking for a house that we can afford, that fits all our stuff, that hasn't flooded and that is connected to fully maintained sewers. Wish us luck!
For those for whom this is tl;dr, we had an offer accepted on a house. There are problems. We may back out. We're still homeles. Moral of story - rent, don't buy!
P.S. I do still have my three afternoons a week job though - I can cope with that!
Once upon a time there was a house. It was sixty years old, extended and warreny and Andrew loved the space and I could See The Potential, once it had new windows and a fireplace and all the rooms were painted. Most importantly it would fit all of our stuff. So we put in an offer and after a little wrangling it was accepted. This was in July. Nothing happened really until the end of August as it turns out that solicitors like to take their holidays long and often and so nothing happens.
Eventually the searches came back and the forms that the vendor was meant to fill in. Now this house sale is due to a marriage break-up, and the male resident didn't appear to really want to go, although he admitted that he was struggling to maintain the house any more (hence the fifty-year old windows and dodgy 80's wall colours. There may be woodchip paper still on the walls....) The information forms were certainly signed by him as there was a diagonal scrawl across one line, but it seems the forms were filled in by the soon-to-be-former Mrs Vendor, who managed to tell us that there was no conservatory and that it was built in 1976, amongst other things. I've looked and there definitely isn't even an invisible conservatory. There were other things like a comment that the property flooded three years ago - well, so did most of Thatcham - but there was no detail, and now that I think about it, no water authority for the sewage and drainage.
So we started sending a list of questions back to the solicitor and started getting very vague answers from their useless solicitor , or no answer at all (our solicitor has admitted that he's useless). Andrew went and googled 'Thatcham flood' and the very first youtube video was of someone boating down the road where the house that we may or may not buy is. So now he can tell you everything you ever wanted to know about the time that half of Newbury and Thatchm went underwater. Oh, and he's taught the Flood Forum a few things too, which is a little worrying. There was actually 9 inches of water that got into the house but as far as we can tell it was all mended properly. Of course this now makes the house almost uninsurable as it's still Less Than 400m From A Watercourse (or a culvert, but the insurance companies don't differentiate, so that they can run away more easily). And with this climate it could indeed flood again....
Then there was that other little problem that I sort of noticed and sort of didn't. In Kent we paid one water company for our water and one for our sewage/drainage. Job done. However Andrew actually properly read the Thames Water report and looked at the map and went "the sewer/drains that run under the house are un-adopted!" - literally. There is a main Thames Water-maintained sewer in the road, but the branch drains(?) that go under the houses are not maintained by ANYONE! Oh, and there's a three-way junction under the manhole in the back garden of The House, which, if the area floods again, would likely spray sewage all over the garden. Hmmm.
Naturally because it's an area with a flood history, the council, Thames Water and the housing association that still owns 1/3 of the houses in the area don't want to take on something that will be so much trouble. Um. Nor do we. So if we don't get answers and assurances that someone looks after those drains then we'll have to walk away, £800 quid poorer, but without taking on a property that could cost thousands to maintain and repair. We're a bit stuck at the moment, waiting for various organisations to come back to us with answers and for our solicitor to come back to Earth from wherever she's been for the last two weeks.
So it looks like we could still be in our assortment of spare rooms in another three months' time and still looking for a house that we can afford, that fits all our stuff, that hasn't flooded and that is connected to fully maintained sewers. Wish us luck!
For those for whom this is tl;dr, we had an offer accepted on a house. There are problems. We may back out. We're still homeles. Moral of story - rent, don't buy!
P.S. I do still have my three afternoons a week job though - I can cope with that!