PN33

chauveau Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Dulwich Hamlets football club has squash It's ?10 for 40 minutes though!

Completely depends what you want. There was an amazing Soul Band on at the Bussey Building on Saturday, the Amersham Arms in New Cross regularly host gigs too. There's often swing nights and stuff at the Great Exhibition too

Blackcurrant Wrote: > November to December is the best time to pick up > bargains. The dark evenings make everything look > less appealing and people are distracted by > Christmas, so demand is lower and prices are a > touch softer, usually. > > I think the second phase of help to buy will be > watered down until it becomes irrelevant, as it's > a totally stupid idea. But Osborne can't do a > U-turn at the moment without looking daft, so > don't expect any announcement. Same situation > applies to the governor of the Bank of England who > has set himself up to look like an idiot over > forward guidance. > > Mortgage rates might creep up next year. Even so, > London keeps pulling people in and not enough is > being built, so prices here are never going to be > cheap. > > If SE London gets too expensive, have a look at > the ends of Crossrail, e.g. from Acton to > Reading/Maidenhead. The commute from those areas > to the City will drop substantially, which should > push up prices faster than the rest of London. Thanks for this... quite a few estate agents told us on Saturday that August was a terrible month for new properties coming onto the market but they've been instructed to value quite a few in the last week or two so we should start seeing a few more potential's soon. It was quite reassuring actually, most estate agents told us we'd have no problem finding what we want, it's just a bit of a waiting game. Makes a change from some of the less-respectable estate agents (bottle of Perrier anyone?) who seem to want to scare us into thinking we have to move way out of the area to get anything near our budget. I don't think we'll need to do anything as extreme as head towards the Crossrail links to be honest... if we can't buy in SE15/SE22, our second choice is Deptford/New Cross, and there are still a pretty decent amount of properties available in that area. Girl82 - we have indeed considered the Queens Road area, but similarly to the rest of SE15, barely any properties have come onto the market in the last month or so.

Cool, thank you. Hopefully something might come up before then too

> At the moment there is almost nothing on > Rightmove. Same story all over London. The main > reason for this is extremely low mortgage rates, > which means very few people who are financially > stretched need to sell. In a normal market there > are always a fair few "forced sellers", e.g. > overstretched landlords who can't cover the > mortgage with rent or people made redundant etc. > and find they need to downsize in a hurry. When > the BoE cut rates to near zero all the forced > sellers disappeared, supply dried up, and prices > shot up. This isn't normal and won't continue > indefinitely. Thanks, I understand that. I guess we feel a sense of urgency because of this help to buy scheme which currently doesn't affect us as it's only applicable to new-builds (we're not looking at them at all, we want a period-coversion with a garden). But as of next year this scheme is going to be opened up to existing buildings which will mean a large number of renters can all of a sudden afford a period conversion, meaning demand is likely to shoot up even more. So we've set ourselves a target of Xmas. Just out of interest, if August is the worst time to look, when are the good times? I'm hoping you say Winter!

Ok thanks. Many properties just list the street name and don't mention the number which could be explained by this strategy! But in many cases the properties are probably identifiable somehow if there's an image of the outside front. Thanks for the tip!

AcedOut Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Look at places for sale on Rightmove, bypass the > agent and drop a letter though the door to arrange > a private viewing. If they sell to you, they save > the estate agent fees. Would many sellers go for this do you think? I always thought that it was the convenience/service offered by estate agents when selling which earned their relative crust

LondonMix Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Try to make friends with some of the agents. They > are slime but it makes a big difference. A lot of > properties don't even make it to market as agents > preview them to select favoured clients on their > books. It happens a lot. We have both recently > sold and bought this way in ED. Thankyou for this; it is also part of our masterplan. It's hard to do when my girlfriend and I both work full-time but we have made a list of all local estate agents (28 by our count) and we plan on seeing as many of them as possible tomorrow and calling the others next week. Thanks a lot for this advice by the way, we are first time buyers and any tips are greatly appreciated

Twirly Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Don't forget that August is traditionally a quiet > month for properties coming on the market and > don't lose hope. Thanks for that. I was told the same thing from an estate agent, so naturally disregarded it :-)

Could be something to do with Firefox at work, it's a bit glitchy sometimes and I can't update the settings. No worries, I have signed up using Chrome. When will the first newsletter be going out? I have friends over tomorrow and wait with baited breath to find out some cool stuff you've found!

> Try Nunhead. The 250K stamp duty barrier is still > holding back the price of a lot of flats in places > like Ivydale Road. You can find large victorian 2 > bedroom flats, but under 250k will need a little > work. Once refurbed they are worth nearer 300. > > The north end of Ivydale is an easy walk to > Brockley for the east london line. Nunhead is our number one spot! We are desperately trying to find somewhere around there, and cannot exceed the 250 mark as the deposit alone has been a stretch, paying 3% stamp duty upfront would cripple us. We have been looking every day for the past month and barely anything comes up in Nunhead... it seems by the time we see anything it's already under offer. We are going on a big scouting mission tomorrow though, fingers crossed!

Great idea! FYI the email box doesn't work in Firefox

Where do they find these properties?! We are having such difficulty finding any one-beds within 2 miles of SE15 for less than ?250k that isn't either ex-Local Authority (with huge service charge) or a total dump that needs another ?50k or so spending on it! Similarly to that berk with the trainers, I would have made an offer on that Forest Hill flat straight away

Here's the article. Very sad, and another stark reminder for us cyclists http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/woman-cyclist-killed-on-day-boris-reveals-plan-to-fine-hgvs-not-fitted-with-safety-gear-8797656.html

I've never experienced 47mbps but I'm not entirely sure what you can do with it (within the confines of the law) that you can't do with 10?

They've sorted it. Didn't even need to do the diagnostics, the guy from Sky had spoken to an engineer in between our phone calls and he'd done something with Openreach in the area and now I'm getting 10mbps, c'est super! Is everybody else's sorted too?

Just spoken to them - they couldn't do a full troubleshooting session as I'm not at home; speaking to them when I get back this evening. But he did tell me that in our area we should be able to get download speeds of up to 13mbps, and he can see that my line is currently 1.4mbps

Just run a speedtest and the download speed is 0.81mbps; this used to be more like 5 or 6... rubbish. I'll contact them tomorrow, weird that someone else local has suffered the same problem though

Hello Has anybody else experienced super-slow sky broadband over the last week or two? Thanks

DMW23 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > It's nothing to do with Frank's bar on top of the > carpark on rye lane? That opened 3 weeks ago for > the summer. Frank's never play loud music.... this is clearly somebody who hasn't got a licence to worry about!

tomskip Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Aha! (female here, despite username) I hadn't > considered getting to Camberwell that way by bike, > though I do it by car all the time. You mean the > Lyndhurst Way route don't you? I might try that > and then cycling parallel to C New Road, Myatt's > fields sort of area. Good idea. Yes that's the one. Only takes me about 15 mins to get to Vauxhall this way

Applespider Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > The 185 route does have DKH though which is a bit > of a monster if you are new to cycling. Excellent > hill training though! He's coming from the library and I live at 'that end' too (near Heber Road)... the best route is down Crystal Palace Road and keep going, all the way down to Bellenden Road. Follow that round onto Camberwell New Road, joins just up from the College of Arts. It's probably half a mile longer but takes less time given the flatness! And it's nicer too as there are no buses until you get to Camberwell New Road... DKH is horrible when you've got a double decker right behind you at a similar pace!

uncleglen Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I would use the 185 bus route since there are bus > lanes. In my experience people drive like nutters > round the back streets. I cycle it every day. I've seen people on here with an irrational fear of Camberwell New Road but I think it's prefectly safe as you're one of many cyclists, and for the most part there are bus lanes. Be a bit careful as you approach Vauxhall though and make sure you go under the tunnel and not around it with the cars.... it's really gnarly and not obvious that you're not meant to do it

Thanks but again, they open at 9am. Can't believe how hard I'm finding this!

Do not get an iPhone 5