Ferdinand

I have dealt with Purple Bricks before, but for a purchase. My comments: 1 - Yes, competent and a good system, but you are beholden to the competence of your counterparty. If your buyer is useless or appoints a poor solicitor, it can cause havoc. That is no different to normal EAs, however, except that the pile of doo-doo is on your plate, and you do not have a rep around to chase it up. 2 - Make sure that you have all the information in the system copied to be out of the system. In particular, make sure that the contact details of all your potential buyers or sellers are recorded in your own system somewhere. You need the direct communication. The best way is to swap details at the viewing for questions and so you can go back later if it falls through. Given your approach you have probably done this already ! 3 - Obviously the quality of the local Purple Bricks rep is important. On the transaction. 4 - You have highlighted that you want a quick sale. That means choosing the offer that is not encumbered but also the people with the support services that can deliver that sale. And responding to queries on a very short cycle. 5 - These days the selling and buying process is a hell of a lot more box-ticky than it was. Careful judgement needed when someone demands a change because of x or y whether to comply or walk-away. If you have eg all applicance instructions and so on in place, so much the better. 6 - Looking at the contemporary market (subject to Dorset being different if eg it is a total sellers' market or your place being gold dust), it will be dead in August and from autumn half-term; that is, a remarketing should the thing fall through will need to be in place by late Sept at the latest, or you will be taking a winter price, or waiting until at least March 2019 before remarketing seriously. 7 - So my conclusion would be to give it a very short time (perhaps another 10 days or end of July) for viewings and written offers to be received, then choose one that meets your criteria but with a strong emphasis on which one you believe will deliver, then ask for exchange quickly - perhaps end of August. That is easily doable if there are no serious problems. If you can find a cash buyer with a hard constraint kicking their backside (eg need to move in time for school year), then so much the better. 8 - Maintaining it for an extra 6 months will be £1000-2000, which counts against any costs from taking a slight hit elsewhere. I took a biggish hit (25%+ off a price which was really difficult to judge from the start so I started high and came down) on my last property, which took 18 months to sell, but do not regret it. I could have been in a situation of being stuck for several years, as the property was so unique. Was I there now, perceptions would also (falsely) be blighted by HS2 which is close but the other side of a motorway. OTOH we save about 20% on the one we bought. @ProDave has taken the other strategy of not slashing the price and waiting - horses for courses, as there is not a universal best strategy. Ferdinand

When no one attaches any weight to EPCs, it is probably 1 I am afraid. F

It will be about year 3 before you have a very significant proportion being repeats, if it is gooD enough and good enough value that they keep wanting to come back. Even after that, reckon on needing to recruit perhaps 30% or 50% new each year, though if you get customers with ties eg people visiting married children then you may do well on this front. Finding a good management service is important, even as a backup. Have a good look at my links above. Aberdeen should be a good location, however. But ca; it give a decent return on a 500k investment. F

I think you are into the various options for BTL funding. Holiday let’s are more specialised than usual BTL, possibly with lower LTV. And I think you may want a specialist broker especially if you want to build it as well, or bridge + remortgage, or fund via a main residence mortgage. Holiday let’s have not been as heavily clobbered by tax as btl, but who knows what will happen, and Scotland will do its own thing. Useful links: https://www.propertytribes.com/holiday-let-every-portfolio-should-have-one-t-127628186.html https://www.propertytribes.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=25&action=latest_posts https://www.primelocation.com/discover/property-news/the-most-profitable-places-to-own-a-holiday-home-in-the-uk/ Ferdinand

At least on the internet you get to send it back. After all my palaver last week about my replacement basket strainer for my sink, and ordering the part from the Franke recommended spares place, I *still* ended up with the wrong one. This week I'll be hawking the other one around spares places to find one that matches :-). F

Should we have said this first? My defence is that I did not come in until nearly page 4. What about you lot? But think how less interesting @newhome's weekend would have been.

It is worth a price on the check of the entire mechanism. If one thing has worn out, so might another piece. The last leakyloo problem I had, we just replaced the entire mechanism for very little money.

I look so young anyway that I am still on the same bottle !

Pears or Imperial Leather. And I look so young because I use Oil of Ulay.

I like soaps, but I missed the episodes of this one. ?

Some landscaping?

Potential for a by bulk purchase later in the year?

This might be of serious interest to me, since though I have a large 10kWp solar array, I do not currently use a Divert Device or have a suitable sink load. I am also move to an small electric car for local stuff after the current super mini wears out. I am also waiting for an excuse to move about a third of my solar to South facing from East facing and shaded onto a new car port/veranda, so I could perhaps increase my output and get a better distribution through the day. Have you done any calculations, Jeremy? My current pv production is around 5MWh per year, and electric usage is around 3.5kWh for an elect bill of say £500 per year. That looks very viable just from savings if they have say a 10 year life or more. If I get £350 bill savings that would be a 10 year flat payback, ignoring price increases of electricity.

Thanks for the quick correction. I just twigged and was editing out the thickitude from my post. ? Light, heat, services eg boiler and sewage plant if fitted, sufficient cooking, sufficient water heating in case of gas loss, and selected mains sockets. PS And the cat shocker.

@JSHarris Does that mean your gorgeous sunny retaining wall has just been reallocated from grapevines or strawberries to solar? ? I make 9.6kWp to be about 65 sqm, which is a lot. I don’t know where I would put a further system on my plot.

Plus professionally installed not connected systems.

Something else. They already all shifted their business models 2 years ago, or got out. The one that did mine now does much more on battery systems, for example. There also opportunities in energy saving consultancy, I think.

I think one way may be to reflect on the amount of your time it will take up. We have not iirc discussed this in tems of hours. My very approx guesstimates might be: I think route 3 might take 500-1500 hours of your time. Ie 3-9 FTE months. Route 2 might be more like 1500-2500 hours. 12-20 FTE months. And route 1 might be 2000-4000 hours. 15-30 FTE months. Route 4 - doing a lot of work yourself - could take up x hours, where x is a number less than perhaps 10,000. Each over a period of between 2 to 5 years period, depending. I would be interested in others’ opinions. My experience is that even if I am employing contractors etc, the PM can easily swallow half my time on a renovation if I a interested in the result in detail. Somebody may may have been mad enough to have logged it all. Ferdinand

Plus around building in your own garden I think.

There are tax aspects to this arrangement eg CGT. Take advice.

Welcome. I am Notts/ Derbys borders. but not that far South.

http://solutions.3m.co.uk/wps/portal/3M/en_GB/3MWindowFilm/WindowFilm/Products/ 0845 600 9543 F

have you tried contacting 3M themselves?

Do you have plans for birds with your new build? I particularly like integrated Swift boxes. Here we had until last year a row of lime and horse chestnut tree down our drive on the neighbour side. Swifts used to fly circuits round them in May, catching insects. One thing I have noticed is the huge benefit of the occasional 3m high bush over 2m high bushes. Cut a bigger one down to 2m or less and small birds seem not to want to roost there anymore. At least that is what I have observed here, F

Welcome. I think your best answer to the q in para 3 is to go and talk to the most local hire firm, if you have one ?, because they will know the streets and give a better rounded answer, perhaps from experience of jamming a Scammell in there in 197x. If it gets closer, then it will be worth looking therough the LPA planning records for a similar restricted access site, and perhaps even talking to them about what they did. Ferdinand