Confessions of a house hoarder

cazmanian_minx

Crikey, is it really two-and-a-half years since I last posted here?  I started getting notifications in my inbox so came to investigate. 

The very quick update:

1 - Ethel's House got finished, we're just finishing our second year of renting it out.  It's gone better than we could have possibly imagined, the original income estimate from the agency was about £13.5k a year after commission, in 2019 we took £17.5k after commission. 

2 - We ended up not buying the house next door, so we still live in the same place.  We did remortgage just before Christmas though, as I was getting twitchy about interest rates.  We were on base rate + 1.1 for life of mortgage, interest only, but managed to get a 5-year fix at 1.78%, no fee, and we're now on a repayment mortgage, so the next time I have to think about it there'll be a big chunk gone. 

3 - However, we did end up buying another house in 2018.  I've been very lax about updating my blog, but it's 17 miles further up the coast from where we live now and I just fell head over heels for it.  It had been on the market for two years and had some issues, we ended up paying £110k against an asking price of offers over £130k.  I haven't dared add up what we've spent on it yet (my excuse is that I haven't had the last bill from the electrician yet), but I reckon it'll get valued at £200k and my plumber/heating engineer, who also invests in property in the area, reckons it'll be £220k.  The same agency that books Ethel's for us is coming to have a preliminary look at it next week and tell me where I'm going to sit on their grading scale, which will let me know whether I'm buying Tesco Fox & Ivy crockery or Royal Doulton!  I know it'll be at least a 4-star, because I think it's better than Ethel's and that was 'easily' a 4-star apparently, but it's whether I get put into the 4-star Luxury or 5-star band that will make the difference.  Part of me wants to stay in the 4-star levels, because 5-star comes with a whole different set of expectations, but if I do get 5-star for it, it'll be the only one this far north on their books and the revenue jump will be pretty big (about an extra £1,000 a week in high season).

I shall try and sort out my sig later in the week and try and start posting regularly again, I've got a bit spendy recently (er, like a new horse, although in fairness he's on permanent loan rather than I've bought him, but he did need some stuff...) and it would be good to have some focus. Still transcribing, mostly for the same people.

dawnybabes

Ooh I’ve missed you, welcome back ! 

Verbatim

From me too!

EssexHebridean

Another hello from me too - good to see you back! 

Jessy103

Good to see you back, sounds like you've had an exciting couple of years!

TallGirl

lovely to have you back glad it all worked out with the houses sounds exciting.  

cazmanian_minx

Two expenses I didn't need this week.  Firstly the rear brake discs and pads on my car couldn't be put off any longer, so that was £225.  Went to collect it this morning, got to the garage just before they shut at lunchtime, collected the keys (I went in and paid yesterday, but was driving the van as I'd gone in on the off-chance it was done), went back for it after we'd done the weekly shop and had some lunch - would it start?  Would it heck.  So I've had to leave it there and hope no one vandalises it over the weekend, posted the keys through the garage office door and left a message on their answerphone explaining why I haven't driven it home.  Secondly, we called in at the carpet shop to pick up the keys for Tor (current house that's nearly ready) as our decorator had noticed one of Karndean floor tiles in the kitchen had lifted very slightly and since Callum was heading out that way last week on another job he said he'd call in and have a look.  He said that enough moisture had got in that the glue had dissolved and the screed had bossed - he'd lifted all tiles affected so it could dry out, but we needed to track down the source of dampness before he came back out to repair and re-lay.  Shot out there, panicking slightly, and figured out that when the shoddy old asbestos garage had been put up, they'd cut into the gable end of the house wall to pour the concrete slab it sat on and left a gap between the slab and where they'd cut out at the base of the render.  Not a problem when there's a garage built over it, but this is the first prolonged spell of bad weather we've had since it came down, plus the gap's filled up with debris, and as a result damp had spread in through the floor.  Pete, my builder, needs to come out and sort a wall in the garden for me that had some tree root damage (tree now removed), so I sent him some pictures and asked him to rake out the gap and plug the whole thing when he's out doing that, which he will.  But annoying, as I'll have to pay him to do that and then Callum for re-doing the floor - I can't expect him to re-do that for free as it's not his fault. 

Sig now updated.  I only get mortgage statements for the two rentals at the end of every financial year and don't have online access to the accounts, so will update those when they arrive - not that they'll have changed much, as they're interest only, but I think we're a few pence down on each!  They were both 2-year fixed rate deals, so will need remortgaging shortly anyway, and then the Tor figure will go up as we release some of the equity for the next project.

Talking of which there's an open view for a lovely old 1800s community hall tomorrow, which I'm going to go along to.  Extremely unlikely we'll make an offer, despite a very low guide price of £60k, because (a) we haven't released the equity from Tor yet and (b) when the community trust that owns it got quotes for bringing it back into use as a public building, they came in at over £1 million.  Now, to turn it into a residential property, which apparently the planning department would be happy with, wouldn't cost quite as much, but it's B-listed and an important building in the village, so the listed buildings officer is going to be all over it.  I was talking to an electrician who'd been doing some work on a building I looked at buying a few years ago that's A-listed and asked him how the new owners were getting on - he said they'd been made to undo all the unauthorised work the previous owners had done and six small windows had cost them £20k.  This place has 17 large ones...  Normally I don't view places I don't think I'm going to offer on, as I think it's very impolite to waste people's time like that, but an open viewing is fair game

brizzlegirl

Weyhey!!! She’s back!! Great to have you posting again Caz and glad the collection of houses in the far North is growing for you  

cazmanian_minx

Definitely not going to buy the community hall, for several reasons.  (a) The Listed Buildings Officer is going to want all the windows reinstated correctly and that's going to be close to six figures on its own, (b) it's lath and plaster, which will probably have to be preserved, and the beautiful plaster ceilings, which are falling off in chunks because of the damp, will probably have to be reinstated, (c) I doubt very, very much whether any mezzanine floor (as the sales particulars suggest could be put in) would be allowed to touch the walls, which means going through the floor to put supports in and (d) the layout of the place means it's an awkward conversion to residential.  I'm not saying it can't be done, but it doesn't really want to be anything other than what it is, a big hall with two smaller rooms at one end and one very manky lean-to toilet.  Not one for us, but interesting to go and see it.

The good news of the week (and it's been one heck of a week) is that the agency came out to have a look at Tor to give me a steer on roughly where it was going to sit on their grading system (which used to be a standard Visit Scotland grading, but has now been tweaked very slightly to their own system), as that will determine how much I spend on equipping the kitchen.  e.g. four star and I buy Tesco Fox & Ivy crockery at £45 for 4 x plate, sideplate and cereal bowl, five star and I buy ProCook Vaasa at £79 for 4 x plate, sideplate and cereal bowl.  (Okay, I really, really wanted the mixed sets of Royal Doulton Pacific, but at £182 for six settings - no!)

Anyway, he came out, loved it, said not only five star but they'd promote it in their Luxury collection as well, and then we went through the income projections.  Bear in mind when they did this for Ethel's three years ago, it was under by about 20%.  Well, I was flipping glad I was sitting down, because their computer system reckons that if I get it up and running in the next month or two, I'll manage about £17,000-£18,000 this year, £30,000-£31,000 next year and £31,000-£32,000 the year after.  That's AFTER they've taken their commission and it'll go up even higher if I get their Customer's Choice award (which I have for Ethel's, it's given to any property maintaining an annual average customer satisfaction score of 9.5 or more) and gives a big boost to your pricing. 

So I did a bit of celebratory whooping after he'd gone and then promptly rang the building society we've got Ethel's with to see if they'd be interested on doing a remortgage on it when the discounted rate on the current mortgage expires in April, so we can get some of the equity out.  Went through all the pre-application questions, then got to the 'Have you had an income assessment done?'  Told her the figures, there was a moment of silence at the other end and then, 'I don't think we've ever had one that high before.  Yes, we'd certainly be interested in offering a mortgage on that.'  I can get the application submitted now and they'll hold off on completion until I no longer have an early repayment charge on the current one, but we need to decide whether we're going to go for the lower interest rate at 60% LTV or the higher interest rate at 75% LTV.  We have, once again, put the renovation spends on 0% cards, and 60% LTV I don't think will quite pay them off - but if the building society doesn't mind, I think I'd rather have a little bit left on the cards to pay off with the income from Tor and pay 1% less over a five-year fix.  I need to sit down with the balances and a calculator and work it all out.

As for Tor, I've agreed with the rep that I'll buy the minimum I need to stage it and then he'll come back and take photos and get it up on all their sites so we can start accepting bookings for the summer.  If I get it finished earlier, we can open up the dates, but at the moment I still need a couple of tradesmen to come out and sort niggles (well, 'niggle' being there's enough water coming in through the bottom of the gable end to dissolve the glue holding the Karndean down in the kitchen and the boiler's drunk nearly 1,000 litres of oil since Christmas Eve...), so we'll stick with a start date of June for now.

edinburgher

Wow, you are an ultra modern crofter Caz!

Transcription, holiday homes and matched betting - if only the old timey crofters had seen how globalisation was going to change their lives 

My parents have a home in the Western Isles, you're far removed from the crofter who also drives the school bus and works weekends in the village shop