Fit the Third: Flat hunting continues
I left off with me sitting on the sofa convalescing while the rest of London decides it's a bad time to put their home on the market. So not only is there nothing new to see, there's no way I can see it.
A month after we'd put an offer on the Battersea flat, the estate agent gets back to us and tells us it's been accepted. As is. Our less-see-if-we-can-take-the-piss starting offer was good enough. Happyjoy! Slight panic (should we have offered less?)! Relief! The nightmare is over and we can start figuring out how to live in the place.
The flat is the 1st and 2nd floor. On the ground floor was an empty ex-furniture shop. Behind it is a huge one bedroom flat. Next door is a lovely pizza place (I can't eat pizza anymore, so I'm not fussed) and a similarly shaped maisonette that's slightly smaller, but with better bath situations. All of these are owned by the same freeholder and all were repossessed. How the pizza place could stay open was a mystery, but not one that bothered me much. The rest were vacant and for sale. Being above a restaurant is apparently one was to get a mortgage place to refuse you. Being next door is not so bad, but still limits options. How do people even live in vast numbers of flats above shops in London? If it's hard to get a mortgage, you'd think those places would either be really cheap or just not residential. Anyway -- that's just a mystery for Bobmonster.
The first thing I do is I spend a day in the flat measuring everything so we can figure out how we're going to fix the toilet and the bath. Not very easy to do when I can't bend alot, but the estate agent lends me this laser measurey thing which makes the task soooooo much easier.
The wifemonster and I start to spend more time in and around Clapham Junction, timing commutes, seeing the flat, trying restaurants. We start talking to builders about what can be done to the place, both legally and logistically. All was going nicely until a check of the council's web site showed an open planning permission on the flat. The whole set of 3 flats and 2 shops would be gutted and turned into 6 one bedroom flats and 2 restaurants. This plan had been resubmitted by the same person (the freeholder) several times over the years and always denied. So we're not too worried.
"That's odd," we thought, "you'd think someone would have mentioned it, you know, the fact the place might be torn down."
So we ask the estate agent about it. We started with the simple question "Who actually owns the flat?" plus "Does this person even have the right to apply for the planning permission?" No answer beyond "oh, it's not likely to be an issue" -- comforting words to someone about to shell out more money than they'd ever spent in their life.
We asked the council, but Data Protection means they can't say anything about the application, even to someone trying to buy the place.
Then came the WTF moment of when we found out the planning permission was put in after the offer has been accepted. That started to explain a bit about why things were so odd and why they'd just accepted our offer -- if they didn't they might not have a place to sell at all. Of course we still didn't know who "they" were.
The final blow was the council accepting the planning permission. We could not get anyone to say what this actually meant - the council, a solicitor, anyone. We do know "they" took the other two flats off the market, so it must mean something.
We were left with 3 options. At best, nothing would happen, and we'd have a nice fix-er-up flat in a decent part of Battersea, near some good friends. Worst would be we'd buy a place that'd be torn down and we'd just be out the cost of the flat. Most likely (in my guess), we'd move into a place with the guarantee of construction surrounding us for like 2 years.
So no. We just walked away from that trainwreck.
Next in part 4: Game over man, game over! What the fuck are we gonna do now? What are we gonna do?
A month after we'd put an offer on the Battersea flat, the estate agent gets back to us and tells us it's been accepted. As is. Our less-see-if-we-can-take-the-piss starting offer was good enough. Happyjoy! Slight panic (should we have offered less?)! Relief! The nightmare is over and we can start figuring out how to live in the place.
The flat is the 1st and 2nd floor. On the ground floor was an empty ex-furniture shop. Behind it is a huge one bedroom flat. Next door is a lovely pizza place (I can't eat pizza anymore, so I'm not fussed) and a similarly shaped maisonette that's slightly smaller, but with better bath situations. All of these are owned by the same freeholder and all were repossessed. How the pizza place could stay open was a mystery, but not one that bothered me much. The rest were vacant and for sale. Being above a restaurant is apparently one was to get a mortgage place to refuse you. Being next door is not so bad, but still limits options. How do people even live in vast numbers of flats above shops in London? If it's hard to get a mortgage, you'd think those places would either be really cheap or just not residential. Anyway -- that's just a mystery for Bobmonster.
The first thing I do is I spend a day in the flat measuring everything so we can figure out how we're going to fix the toilet and the bath. Not very easy to do when I can't bend alot, but the estate agent lends me this laser measurey thing which makes the task soooooo much easier.
The wifemonster and I start to spend more time in and around Clapham Junction, timing commutes, seeing the flat, trying restaurants. We start talking to builders about what can be done to the place, both legally and logistically. All was going nicely until a check of the council's web site showed an open planning permission on the flat. The whole set of 3 flats and 2 shops would be gutted and turned into 6 one bedroom flats and 2 restaurants. This plan had been resubmitted by the same person (the freeholder) several times over the years and always denied. So we're not too worried.
"That's odd," we thought, "you'd think someone would have mentioned it, you know, the fact the place might be torn down."
So we ask the estate agent about it. We started with the simple question "Who actually owns the flat?" plus "Does this person even have the right to apply for the planning permission?" No answer beyond "oh, it's not likely to be an issue" -- comforting words to someone about to shell out more money than they'd ever spent in their life.
We asked the council, but Data Protection means they can't say anything about the application, even to someone trying to buy the place.
Then came the WTF moment of when we found out the planning permission was put in after the offer has been accepted. That started to explain a bit about why things were so odd and why they'd just accepted our offer -- if they didn't they might not have a place to sell at all. Of course we still didn't know who "they" were.
The final blow was the council accepting the planning permission. We could not get anyone to say what this actually meant - the council, a solicitor, anyone. We do know "they" took the other two flats off the market, so it must mean something.
We were left with 3 options. At best, nothing would happen, and we'd have a nice fix-er-up flat in a decent part of Battersea, near some good friends. Worst would be we'd buy a place that'd be torn down and we'd just be out the cost of the flat. Most likely (in my guess), we'd move into a place with the guarantee of construction surrounding us for like 2 years.
So no. We just walked away from that trainwreck.
Next in part 4: Game over man, game over! What the fuck are we gonna do now? What are we gonna do?