Probate query

ValHaller

You definitely don't want this flat if you cannot afford to extend the lease. Basically it is draining value away by the front door for the mortgage and by the back door as the remaining lease reduces. If you cannot get on top of this, you will have a dwindling asset and you would do better to have your share of the sale proceeds. Do bear in mind of course that the fair price to you is 80% of market value.

Lyncroft

That's true, I'd have to come up with 4/5 and not the whole lot. Still a big chunk of money to find and then the vagries of the service charge and possible major works on top. Food for thought I guess. Just like to get on with it as it's going to get more expensive all the time.

Thanks for the reply.

John_Pierpoint

Is this a 2 bed flat in a 3 - 4 floor traditional brick structure, or a "tower" block ?

Flats with lifts, boilers, and common parts indoors, that cannot be accessed from ladders and simple scaffolding, have inbuilt high administration & maintenance costs.

Lyncroft

It's a 1 bed 8 floor 1950s LA block. The things the LA dream up to spend money on never fails to surprise me!

John_Pierpoint

I think I have got the idea, when I was at primary school, I used to get "entertained" by helping a great aunt collect for charity in similar then new blocks of flats. It was possible to do such a collection after school in the late afternoon at this time of year because the access was brightly lit and anyway the front doors were much closer together.;)
Those flats were solidly built, the original tenants are dead by now and inside the M25 the top floors enjoyed impressive views down hill over what now will be houses in the £400k - £1,000k range - I think Hitler's bombers had cleared the site and by now the blocks might have been "yuppified". My daughter's first house was within a 15 minute walk of the centre of a southern city. It was an end of terrace 3 bed 1950 ex council house. Her choice, at the bottom of the local market, was between this solidly built and well maintained executors sale and a mid terrace 1860s, built to house tannery workers and opening directly onto the street, the same distance from the city centre. The tannery was in the process of being redeveloped into "luxury" flats. As a property the council house was bigger, well insulted with twice the land area, admittedly it also had a "ransom" restrictive covenant, against an extension on it. But the 20% lower price of the end of terrace was really just snob value.
So what I am really saying is that I would only buy a flat in a council block if I was reasonably sure that it would be free of the risk of going into a downwards spiral of no hope tenants and underfunded maintenance.
http://www.thejoyofconcrete.org/gorb/gorbalsdebate.htm



Same architect, different authority, different tenants.

I would consider the top floors of the latter if it was majority owner occupied and in an up and coming location. The maintenance costs make it unsuitable for occupation by poor people.

madbadrob

John,

I saw that demolition in the Gorbals Was a real party atmosphere and 4 arrests by the police after a few local yobs decided to get drunk and cause trouble

Rob