house or flat????

rainbow_carnage

BitterAndTwisted wrote: »

True but unfortunately for some they only find out whether they have lovely responsible nieghbours once they've bought and moved in. When viewing a flat to buy no-one is going to tell you about the lousy, money-grabbing agents or landlord or about the obscene service-charges you'll have to pay with no control over how it's spent/wasted

If you take the time to do some research, you can greatly increase your chance of getting a nice flat.

For example, if I were to buy a place in our neighbourhood, I'd go onto the local message board and ask people to recommend an estate agent. There are post like that all of the time, and people are happy to share their home buying experiences. A good, honest estate agent will tell you about problems.

Next, I'd ask about specific roads that appeal to me. Doing a simple google search is often enough to find out about problems like violent neighbours. For example, I'd never buy a flat two streets over from ours because a really lousy drummer lives there. I know this not because I've heard him play, but because I've seen posts with people complaining, naming the street.

Obviously, you won't get perfect info this way, but if you aren't doing at least this much before you spend £160,000 on a place, you can't turn around and complain.

Metranil_Vavin

We live in a maisonette..so technically a flat but half a Victorian house so somewhere between a flat and a house.

The guys who live in the downstairs flat are lovely, very friendly and help us out when we go away by feeding our cats etc, and simillarly we help them out.

We've had a number of external things done on the house and we have all sat down and decided which builder to use etc, and split the cost 50/50.

Never have noise problems, so all in all we love living here.

Mind you I would dearly love a whole house, especially as we are thinking of starting a family soon, but would probably have to move a bit further out of London in order to be able to afford it.

GrammarGirl

tizhimi wrote: »

I rent a flat, wasn't too keen at first but now I LOVE it.

Its light, spacious (if I had less junk), easy to keep clean, modern build so zero heating bills (I kid you not, honestly - I have never had to use the underfloor heating, I'm debating keeping the windows open all day and night just so I can test the underfloor heating!) Private gated parking, private lovely garden, clean communal area (was shocked to find a windown cleaner at 8am peeping through the window), cannot hear a peep out of the nieghbours - I am shocked at the noise insulation, it is amazing. There was a proper hardcore late party happening last week and the only noise I heard was when the door bell went to invite me round!

Would I buy the place? Not a chance in hell. At the end of the day... its not a house.

My thoughts exactly. I rent a flat, sounds rather similar to yours. We love it here, we're happy to stay for the next few years as we start saving a deposit... but after that, it'll be a house all the way.

5monkey

There is one house i like....

tek-monkey

House! Although for me its the garden, and some flats still have one I suppose. Around here 3 bed houses are about 30% more than 3 bed flats, but I still want the house. Have looked at flats, there is a nice cheap one near me for £105k, but I remember seeing it for £44k when I looked back in 2001 which kind of sours it. "Almost 50k for a flat? Sod that, I'll rent" said the damn stoopid tek monkey....

Fire_Fox

I live in a flat and I am very happy here, despite a three year dispute with the managing agents! I wouldn't buy a flat in this market if I knew I was going to trade up to something with a garden in a year or two as it costs thousands to sell up (estate agents, solicitors, removals). Rent something cheap and save like a demon, really cut your outgoings to the bone and you'll have a house in no time.

5monkey

saving.... saving.... saving...

lynzpower

It would be a house for us too. Preferably in an ideal world a bungalow- the convenience of no stairs, and the ability to play your music/ deal with your own litter, we have pets so we need a private not shared garden.

We will consider flats but they need to be purpose built not lame conversions that london is full of, and have a big garden. Some local authority GF maisionettes can be good and we would consider those in the right area ( we are in London)