Ferdinand

It is <100g for vehicles bought up to 1/4/2017, then it becomes <1g. Will correct. I'd regard car tax up to £30 as negligible, and up to about £180 as worth thinking about if the vehicle is right. Once it jumps to £250-300 year that becomes a bit of a disincentive imo as that is a couple of thousand extra over the lifetime of the ownership. Ferdinand

I am expecting to do several renovations over the next couple of years, and I will need to go back to having my own car (or two). I am probably looking for a car to tow heavyish loads on a long (say 4m or 5m) trailer, and a runabout for local work. With road tax changes and very aggressive charges tapers for larger CO2 emissions (now) or larger purchase prices (next year), and in year 1 of ownership. I wonder whether anyone has got their head around the changes? Vehicles are grandfathered at their current rates if per-1/4/2017. Details: http://www.whatcar.com/advice/owning/road-tax-bands/ Ignoring the Year 1 regime, as I am mainly interested in ownership for a number of years and not buying new, it seems to me the sweet spots for minimising road tax seem to be: 1 - Cars pre 1/4/2017 with <120 g/km CO2 - up to £30 per year road tax. 2 - Cars post-1/4/2017 with <1 g/km CO2 - zero road tax. 3 - Smaller or mid-size 4x4s pre 1/4/2017 with roughly <160 g/km CO2. 4 - Larger 4x4s post 1/4/2017 which cost less than £40k new. £140 road tax. My requirements would be: A - ZEV runabout. B - Car / 4x4 able to tow 2000kg and ideally 3000kg, with low road tax, and reliable, LPG is a possibility, but also diesel/petrol since for a reasonably low mileage I would get heavily reduced fuel for all of it via Morrisons. Ideally that last implies a fuel tank of roughly 100 litres. Given that I'm likely to be working through a Ltd Company, I may well need a tachograph in addition. Unfortunately. Recommendations of particular vehicles would be most welcome. Ferdinand

The RICS website has a directory iirc. F

This is actually (now I look) about 4 weeks old as a decision. From Planning Resource 20 May 2016: "Last week the Court of Appeal quashed a landmark High Court ruling that had overturned the government's affordable housing exemption policy last year. The policy stated that sites of under ten units or less than 1,000 square metres of floorspace should not be eligible for affordable housing contributions. In their High Court challenge, West Berkshire and Reading Councils had successfully overturned a 2014 ministerial statement that introduced the exemption into national Planning Practice Guidance (PPG) and the policies were removed. However, following an appeal by the government, the Court of Appeal has now quashed the grounds on which the High Court case was won. The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) said the ruling "restores" the policy, which would help smaller builders. The two councils said they are "considering their options with regard to appeal". Stuart Crickett, associate director at planning consultancy WYG, said: "The government can once again amend the PPG to bring the former policies back into force. Experts said a key aspect of the latest judgment was its suggestion that, despite the positive outcome for the government, authorities have the power to resist the national exemption through their local plans. Court of Appeal judges said the councils' argument that the wording of the 2014 policy meant it should be applied in a "blanket fashion" was misplaced, and that the High Court judge had wrongly "conflated what the policy says with how it should be deployed". " http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.planningresource.co.uk%2Farticle%2F1395374%2Faffordable-homes-small-sites-ruling-means&oq=cache%3Awww.planningresource.co.uk%2Farticle%2F1395374%2Faffordable-homes-small-sites-ruling-means&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.1295j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 and from May 11th 2016 "The Court of Appeal in London today backed government plans to exempt small development sites from the need to have affordable housing included on them. Reading Borough Council and its neighbour West Berkshire District Council claimed that the new policy, introduced in a ministerial statement in November 2014, would drastically reduce the amount of affordable housing across the country by more than 20 per cent. And they claimed that it would have a particular impact in their areas, as well as providing a windfall to landowners and developers." http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.planningresource.co.uk%2Farticle%2F1394534%2Fcourt-backs-government-plans-exempt-small-sites-affordable-homes-obligations&oq=cache%3Awww.planningresource.co.uk%2Farticle%2F1394534%2Fcourt-backs-government-plans-exempt-small-sites-affordable-homes-obligations&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.1260j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 Ferdinand

And this is the thing extended. That is 26ft, and tilted away at 50 degrees, albeit without a scale object. Seems to work well, but I think I will need a scrubber and in line detergent to get the first lot of ingrained poo off. Easy to use, though, and I can reach 6 panels up from the ground, which is better than clambering around on a 50 degree roof, which is not my idea of hilarity.

Get a peacock.

@JSHarris These days the middle is being pithed out of the market, and accidental landlords will be finding the amounts of paperwork and potential criminal offences threatening, and Mr Osborne is trying to force professionalisation (and take loadsamoney from the system :-). Renting to very good friends can work imo (=both sides value the friendship above all the money they might lose) - if there is trust and both sides work hard, but to rent to acquantances or not very good friends is cruising for a bruising as they may be willing to do you over and lose the friendship. You now have to check their right to rent here, too - and will suffer like airlines or lorry drivers if you give a service to the wrong people. Ferdinand

And here is the pole, with one of the two extensions extended. Quite jury-rigged really - cable ties and hose connections, and the only unusual bits are the extending poll, the sprinkler head, and the 8mm coil pipe. It seems to be reasonably solid, but cumbersome as you would expect. Many people on here could put one together. Cost was about £120, and spares should be easy to come by. Personally I would prefer an extra 3m of hose attached to the handle, so my dodgy hose conenction is not so close to my clothes and feet.

I don't like toddling about on roofs. The package:

Depends on the very local market. Locally here (North Notts ex-mining) the ceiling for a 4 bed modern detached rental is about £800-£900 a month - some exceptions obviously. Such a house will cost approx £220k at is cheapest if work is not required, so the standing advice from Estate Agents to landlords is not to buy anything to rent over £100k unless you are in the Shared House market (not many are). One of the related points is that it is difficult make much of a turn on eg adding a 2nd floor to a bungalow; or in some areas doing newbuild. If you go to Nottingham it is livelier but the City Council are landlord-spankers.. One of our local councils is currently trying to sell housing land with PP next to one of the best areas for about £180k per acre (= 15k per plot), and no one is interested. I own a number of houses locally, and I have pretty much zero CGT liability because prices are stuck in cash terms at what they were 10-12 years ago for most houses. But OTOH yields of 6-8% or more are normal on small rentals. For London they will be getting BOHIC-ed for CGT because values are (sorry - were !) going up, but the yields are 2-4% much of the time. Locally our market for £250-350k properties is dead and very conservative, unless pricing is competitive, or a silly southerner / person with money to indulge falls in love with it. Ferdinand

I bit the bullet and ordered a window cleaner's professional cleaning kit. The parcel arrived today while I was out, and it is the small matter of 10 feet 12 2 inches long. Since I ordered the 26ft reach version I guess that means it is in 3 telescopic sections. Guess who is having some fun this weekend?

Even if it doesn't sell at an auction the vendor will stir incur costs for eg advertising, literature and so on, which may amount to several hundred ukp. Ferdinand

@ProDave Having just read a bit of background, is it the former B&B we are talking about? Is there a route which involves renting it to someone wanting to try out a B&B busines for a couple of years to see if they want to do that? Or even renting it to a B&B chain (do these exist?)? Even Hilton Hotels are not mainly owned by Hilton. Then there may be the prospect of them opting to buy. Ferdinand

My comments, and I think you have been LLs in the past so it won't be a shellshock. I wouldn't go the holiday route. That will be lots of buggeration and commuting-to-clean unless you have the right manager or are an outstanding prospect (in which case a holiday lettings bod would have bought it already!). How certain are you to rent it out? Scottish rental law has changed massively, and there is a lot to catch up with, which I think from your past you could do. Talk to the Scottish Landlords people. You may even need to be trained as well as rubber stamped. There is no guarantee that a populist government won't do something really stupid. I am not sure what the position is with Tenure now - I think Section 21 has gone, and you now have to have one a define list of reasons to evict. You could rent it out with a modest mortgage (<60%), and use the mortgage to finish your house. At present rates are very good, so if you lock in 5 or 10 year money (eg Kent Reliance, BM Solutions) that could work. 5yrs fixed at 3-3.3% with no arrangement charges is available. 800 a month would get you around £150-£160k for a normal 5yr fixed BTL mortgage. If it is reasonably big can you make it an HMO for professionals, which should double or treble your rental yield. I was pursuing those options I would have a good agent and be hands off? I have a couple of student HMOs, and will be doing a couple of pro-HMOs this year, and I just wouldn't want to manage them myself. Can you convert it into flats or 2 semis? Is there anyone you know and trust who would do a rent-to-buy? Can you go any other route - eg London auction? Or you could slash the price to move it. Would -25% do it? Have you considered eg Purple Bricks? Ferdinand

Read the free design ebook devised by Caliwag of this site. It is designed to help you find out about the right questions to ask, and to broaden your horizons. Someone will have a link.

You could try asking the person selling yours for a recommendation of a surveyor, or alternately an established local estate agent after discussing that yours will be sold in the next n months. Then you should get their best recommendation. We actually had a full structural on ours before we sold it and gave the report to potential customers to help them not be scared :-). On a 5000sqft 16C onwards house it cost under £500 by a surveyor who was an adviser to the National Trust. One thing he opined was that the NT would have spent 1m+ on the restoration. Ferdinand

I'll just make 2 comments, Peter. 1 - Think about including a SureStop lightswitch style water cutoff, to make it easy when you go out / away in winter. 2 - If you are doing a shower room in your bungalow conversion, make sure it is the one downstairs (already done?). The people who did the conversion here put the bathroom downstairs, so we will need to replace it when the prospect of mum needing to stay downstairs only happens in a few years. I plan to steel some insights from new generation Hiltons - cascade shower head in one side and a separate shower head at waist level so you can do your feet standing up, and a bench in the other side with a waterfall type shower where you can wash sitting down. Ferdinand

A Comment reproduced from the orginal copy of this blog post: ProDave02 Aug 2014 10:48 AM Crofter, my Static caravan has a living room, kitchen, diner, two bedrooms a toilet and shower room in 28 square metres, so it can be done. But everything is smaller than you would really like and there's precious little storage space anywhere.With the size of your build, I would look up the English definition of "mobile home" (I believe it may be a little larger than the Scottish definition) so it's very likely your build could be made to fit within that and so avoid building control?

A Comment reproduced from the orginal copy of this blog post: Crofter27 Jul 2014 11:04 AM Small is beautiful- or at least that's what I keep telling myself as a redraw my own plans endlessly.On paper, I managed to squeeze a bedroom, en suite, and kitchen/diner/living space into less than 30m2. Then I visited a friend's 30m2 gym and was horrified by how it would actually feel.

A Comment reproduced from the orginal copy of this blog post: MattTweddell24 Jul 2014 09:17 PM Could always use one of those toilets that has the sink built in to the top of the cistern, then the used water goes into the cistern to be used for flushing?

A Comment reproduced from the orginal copy of this blog post: ferdinand16 Jul 2014 09:15 AM The utility room door trick is quite like one I plan to discuss used in my bungalow where the kitchen table can have one side up against the path to the lounge, so the space that would be dedicated to somewhere to move the chairs back into is circulation space the 99% of the time persons 3 and 4 aren't there, eating.Also used in the Aldington House I mentioned in the last post :-). See: F

A Comment reproduced from the orginal copy of this blog post:ferdinand 15 Jul 2014 05:54 PM In England it is LPA by LPA. Planning Resource have a summary here.CiL may be England only :-).My LPA doesn't do CIL (yet), but in future I may wish to do something similar elsewhere.Ferdinand

A Comment reproduced from the orginal copy of this blog post: stones15 Jul 2014 04:30 PM [Ed: The point re CiL startnig at 100sqm was actually wrong for new build, and is now moot as self-build is exempt from CiL] A very interesting point re CiL. Is that country wide or just your local area. That would seem a very compelling reason to keep a build below 100m2 if the contribution was going to be excessive. Provision of a garden room / studio / study etc in lieu of house floor space or a garage with guest accommodation built over it (under permitted development) may resolve some of the limitations, but one assumes you would be subject to VAT on such work and this may be more than the CiL.Other than the cost of a building warrant, the main savings going down the mobile home route would appear to be structural engineering costs. Can we assume these are 3-4% (either hidden or upfront) or higher? Is the saving worth the restrictions on the size you can build and therefore layout? Value wise, such properties always appear to be worth less than an equivalent house. Not an issue of you do not intend ever moving but an individuals circumstances can quickly change. I like the idea of constructing offsite in a dry factory environment, although the restrictions of road haulage regarding maximum height and width dimensions could again have a real impact on what you could construct and still fall within the definition of a mobile home. J

A Comment reproduced from the orginal copy of this blog post: ferdinand15 Jul 2014 09:26 AM @ProDaveInteresting.For your double-park-home the obvious thing would perhaps be a 2-module Portakabin which are designed to link together and are irc built on site in one day.Lightweight pitched roofs work. The bungalow in this article used to have one put on top when the experimental 1971 flat roof reached the end of the experiment. It is made of fibreglass.I still have a pile of those white bricks from 1970 outside the kitchen window in my newly bought house, 'just in case'. Yes, we have used some over the years.I'm playing with similar-ish layouts on a larger scale for a passive version of my studio bungalow above. For me one key dimension is 100sqm gross internal area (excludes outside walls), which is the trigger point for the CiL tax. Doesn't apply to self-build self-occupier (allegedly) but I'm looking at build-to-let.Ferdinand

A Comment reproduced from the orginal copy of this blog post: Nickfromwales14 Jul 2014 10:37 PM I see, bath, shower and basin Still think I'd do away with the cloakroom, slide that all down and get a wc in the master using the sliding doors on that rather than the utility. Shower to side, sink and wc to middle on back wall and bath on end?