House Viewing: Run-of-the-hill and Can O' Worms

Yes, I know the house names are getting a bit bizarre. You'll just have to cope, I'm afraid ;)

You wait weeks for a house viewing, and then two come along at once. I was feeling upbeat and optimistic about these houses, and hoping to put the memory of Boat House behind us. I know I'm a soppy bugger, but let's not worry about that just now.

And so it was that this afternoon Sven, Finn, Cassian, Lloyd and I set off to have a look at Run-of-the-hill. I've been stuck for a name for this all day, because despite being a lovely house in it's own way, there was just nothing remarkable about it - nothing at all. I thesaurused (now a word) 'unremarkable' and got 'run of the mill', and since it's a house in the typical local layout and style, which just happens to be on a bloody big hill, it seemed an appropriate pun.

Cassian looks all official and such.

As usual, I digress. The point is, there was just nothing remarkable about this place at all. This isn't such a bad thing in itself, when you think of some of the remarkable things we've seen on our house hunt. The wall of black mould at Mould Mansion. The shrooms at House of Why. Pretty much everything about Liberties Lodge. We've seen a lot of properties that frankly sucked, and this one didn't at all, but it also didn't have much in the way of potential and none of us particularly liked it, or felt anything about it all.

I think we could have coped, but it's on the market for pretty much the top of our (somewhat theoretical and subject to change) price range, and for that you'd like to think we'd, y'know, like to think about it, rather than being completely unable to form an opinion. Weird, but true.

After a sojourn for tea and bourbon biscuits, we went to look at Can O' Worms. This house was a squeeze for us, even on paper, but it was 60k cheaper than Run-of-the-hill and that can buy you a lot of compromise.

Not as much as this house requires though. The prize for the most optimistic estate agent patter I've heard in ages goes to the very nice lady who said "You could use these kitchen units", whilst neglecting to add "After you've disassembled them, hacked the dissolving plaster and rotting skirting boards off, remedied the damp, re-plastered, and then put the cupboards back." Perhaps she just has a talent for being succinct.

Finn is already a pro house-viewer

Anyway, the thought of what else we might find if we moved the cupboards, or tackled any of the other myriad suspect surfaces which abounded throughout, was just too daunting. We don't have the mad skillz necessary for what we could see was wrong, let alone what we couldn't, so we shall have to let this one pass us by too.

Le sigh. I often get this same feeling when I'm looking for something simple, like a pair of trousers for Finn which don't just look like tiny adult trousers*. In my head I'm looking for something terribly straight forward, which surely ought to be commonplace, and yet somehow, I just can't seem to find it anywhere. Houses seem to be similar, in that what we're after isn't something impossible, like a levitating castle with distinctly un-aerodynamic clothes drying apparatus**, although obviously that would be awesome too. Our future house must be here somewhere,  but I guess we just need to rifle far enough down the back of the sofa to find it.

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Ooo, can you tell I'm feeling slightly despondent? Here is something random to cheer both you, and I, up. Those awesome fellows at The Burrow housing co-op, who are also the awesome fellows behind the Naked Vegan Cooking blog, can also be seen being awesome on a Channel 4 documentary about naturism. Their general loveliness comes across beautifully, and if you feel so inclined, you can support their radical nudity by ethically investing in their co-op loanstock. Win all round.

There, I feel much better now :D

- Hannah


* I just want colourful, squishy trousers, but can only find tiny-adult ones with buttons and flies and mock pockets. I know, I'm fussy as well as soppy.
** This is the castle in question, for those who have never watched anime with Sven around.

House Viewing: House of Why

Hello!

Well, I'm finally back with an update on our activities, and a report back from our latest house viewing. I'll start with the house viewing, because I know you all love the picturey bits the best ;)

House of Why (so named by Mattie, who is beautifully illustrating the source of this name in the picture to the right) is a 5 bedroom/3 reception room property round the corner from where we live now. It is cheap, very cheap. This explains why we went to see it.

The house is a reposession so it's on at a tempting price for it's size (around £115k), but sadly there is nothing tempting about it. Frankly, the only tempting thing is to walk around it saying "Why???" repetitively, which is just what we did. Subject to a fascinating variety of DIY projects over the years, it has fancy flush spotlights in places and serious structural issues in others. There are built-in DVD shelves and fixings for a large flat-screen TV in the same room as large amounts of homegrown fungus. I'm all for self-sufficiency but growing shrooms out of your walls is taking it a bit far.

Suffice to say that this may suit someone, but it isn't us. Another one to put down to experience then. Sad times.


General Updatery

Our final offer on Boat House was turned down and we don't feel inclined to go higher at the moment. It's such a tricky balancing act deciding what to offer, and when to walk away, and it's not something that any of us enjoy. On this occasion it's been a particularly hard decision to make, but we will find the right place in the end. True fact.

In other news, Mattie has decided to move on to pastures new. The precise location of these pastures is as yet unknown, but they look likely to be in the region of Leeds. This move may involve those notorious cattle-rustlers, Cornerstone, and it may not. It may also occur in March, but that is as yet unconfirmed.

Hang on: I seem to be suggesting that Mattie is a cow and that the largely vegan/vegetarian Cornerstone dwellers are cow-thieves. Step away from the metaphor, Hannah (however much I may think that Mattie would approve).

You get the gist though. We will soon be a co-op member down and this makes us all of the sad-but-supportive-of-peoples'-choices. What this means in terms of co-op numbers is also uncertain, but we will keep you posted.

In other, other news, the Localism Bill is now on the statute books, so we are safe and sound as regards the HMO legislation. Woop! That's a little something to cheer us on the long hunt for a home :) 

- Hannah

House Viewing: Boat House and The Dinghy

This is why it is called Boat House.

So, we went to see Boat House again. A week ago. I suck.

We also went to see the house opposite. It's for sale by the same vendor, and would address the fact that Boat House isn't big enough for us. We would need to expand the co-op, which is a whole can o' worms, but we're generally open to the idea. Hence our nosing at this intriguing property.

Aren't they all intriguing?

The Dinghy is technically down as a 3 bedroom house, with 3 reception rooms. I don't know how estate agents decide this stuff, it's fascinating. It's been previously let as a 5 bedroom HMO, with the large basement reception room as a lounge, presumably. This takes up the whole lower ground/basement floor, and has a small bathroom and garden off of it, as you do. The garden was so overgrown we have no idea how bit it is, but the answer is likely to be "not very".




There's another garden which is totally paved (see left) which is at lower ground level but inaccessible from the lower ground floor. Why of course! This makes perfect sense! So to get from the living room to the main (for which read, bigger) garden, you have to get up the stairs and then down the outside stairs again. Hm. The paved garden was nice though, if seriously overlooked. No naked sunbathing here, then. (With a co-op like ours we need to consider these things.)


The bedrooms were suitably non-descript, the kitchen was pretty tiny, and there's a garage. There's not a lot more to be said really, although that is coming from me as the least keen member of the co-op. I do see the benefits of having two houses, and this house is OK, but I like Boat House much, much better.

After looking around The Dinghy, we had another quick peruse around Boat House. Bless the estate agent, he didn't seem to mind our epic nosiness. It did help consolidate the layout in our minds, and also allowed us to answer a few questions we couldn't resolve from memory. I still like it, and everyone else seems keen too.

There are obviously things which wouldn't be ideal with a two-house setup: one house would have a bigger kitchen, dining room and living room, and would be better suited to communal eating. It also has ALL the garden. Does this matter? I don't know, but we need to think about these things. Having the two houses would create a wider range of possibilities, but also a lot more roof to maintain.

We need to cogitate.

To aid both myself, and anyone else who might need it, with their cogitations, I leave you with this picture of Mattie looking uncomfortable sexay.

 - Hannah

House Viewing: Boat House

 Finally, another house viewing! It's been quiet over the summer with no new sitings of potential houses, but this one has been sitting on the market for a while. We actually got the particulars the same day as those for Labyrinth and The Tardis, but the excitement of those two meant this one got lost, quite literally, down the side of a chair. A massive toddler-proofing clearout of the living room at Golem HQ led to it being rediscovered, and we trundled along for a look this morning.

Boat House resides at the top of a rather steep and well-known hill, and has epic views to prove it.  It also has possibly the nicest garden we've seen on a house yet - terraced but sizeable to both front and back. You can see the sea from just about everywhere. J'approve.  Incidentally, it's called Boat House because the terraces at the back have awesome rope hand rails. My bad that I forgot to take a picture, but take my word for it that it feels sufficiently deck-like to warrant the name.

 The awesome garden-ness was a lovely surprise, and provided an interesting contrast with the outside space at The Tardis. It's funny how seeing one house really makes you re-evaluate others, and for me it was interesting to realise how unhappy I am with the the outside space at The Tardis, and how important it feels for Finn to have a lovely garden to grow up in, even if it does have ALL THE STEPS. Our fitness levels would greatly benefit from living here, though, it must be said. Either that or we'd soon be installing a stairlift. Joking aside, we were hoping to have an accessible property to those with mobility issues, and this will never be that. We're doomed to constantly be trading one thing off against another; such is househunting.

We knew from the particulars that this house does not have enough rooms, no matter how we rejig things internally. Without extending, there is no way to fit in all of our basic list of requirements, but we went to look because the whole thing is within budget.  That potentially gives us the option to extend/modify a house to suit a little better, so it seemed worth a look. 

The interior was a total surprise. This house has another huge hallway, and a big sweeping staircase which I am dying to swoosh down. Much to everyone's astonishment, few of the rooms matched the sizes on the particulars, and the interior space is generally lovely. It helps that it's light, with a tonne of south-facing windows. Win all round. Everyone liked the bedrooms, which is a pretty rare moment in our house-viewing history. Cause for celebration there, methinks. There is space for a co-op office in the hallway, and a lean-to utility room/pantry in the generous side-return, if only to reduce the amount of stuff that would have to live in the kitchen.

Because unfortunately, the communal rooms are another story. To be fair, there are two great sized bathrooms, so no problem there. But the kitchen is small and surprisingly triangular - less than ideal for mass-cooking, storage and dining. There are three rooms on the ground floor, two of which would have to be bedrooms, which leaves only one communal/spare room. Although technically this could work, discussions following viewings of similarly under-endowed houses have led us to believe that it would be anything but ideal to only have one communal room. Some of us felt that this was possibly mitigated slightly by the large garden, but that feels slightly tenuous and I'm not sure any of us were totally convinced. As always, pros and cons.

 There is some extension potential (the house is already extended quite radically on one side) but at the moment we can't quite see a way to make ourselves fit. Also, it has some interesting smells/cracks which might account for it's intriguingly affordable price. Still, we all have a good feeling about it, and it has led to some interesting re-evaluation about The Tardis (more on that below). We've decided to let this house sit on the backburner for now, and to re-visit it at a later date if it still doesn't seem like a write-off. Sven has a slightly bonkers plan regarding how we could make this house work, but I am saving it for a later blog-post as we need to get more information. Mysterious!


In related news, we tried to book another viewing for The Tardis, but were heartily put off by the estate agent. It looks like it is not going to be on the market for a while, and so he is reluctant to show us around. Doom biscuits all round. We're still considering it though, and at the very least, it does provide a good contrast property for anything else we look at.


Secondary Rules Progress

We've been working on these for quite some time. I don't know how long, it feels like forever. We are making progress though, yes indeedy. It's just the slow, consensual type of progress which we are becoming accustomed to on our journey as a co-op. I meant to type up a list of all the things we are aiming to have secondary rules for, but Finn has just woken up, so I shall instead give you some quick examples: income, children, bills, visitors, joining/leaving and grievance procedures, rents, bills, decorating, pets - the list goes on. We even have Rule 7 (disappointingly our particular Rule 7 is only the third definition on Urban Dictionary) to cover pretty much all eventualities that we don't manage to cover in the myriad of other rules.

This might seem like dramatic overkill, but we think it's an important way to shape the culture of the co-op. Radical Routes thinks that they are important too, and having a set of secondary rules, however simple or complex, is a requirement of membership. Respect and common sense come from peoples' behaviour, but it doesn't hurt to have something to point at when something doesn't quite feel right to the rest of the co-op. Agreeing these things while we are all on great terms with each other is also better than trying to thrash them out when there's a emotive issue on the table.

The secondary rules also serve as a good way of outlining what living in our co-op will be like, both for ourselves and for future potential members. When they're done, we will also post them on the blog so that you can have a nosey at them in all their verbose glory. For now, have a gander at these from Mary Ann Johnson Housing Co-op and Rhizome Housing Co-op to get an idea of what we're up to.

- Hannah 

House Viewing: The Tardis and Labyrinth

Since Mould Mansion we have not had a house to view which in any way fitted our size/price criteria. We've been to look at some nonetheless, but always with the knowledge of their inappropriateness in the backs of our minds. Sad times, indeed.

The other day Finn and I had a borrowed baby sling to try out, and so we went on a trawl of the estate agents to see if there was anything interesting about. We drew a blank, but a few hours later one of the agents rang saying he had a house that had just come on that would suit, and that the owners lived in the same street and were thinking of selling their house too, and did we want the particulars?

Er, yes!

When they came through they were incomplete, but very intriguing. Both houses are within our price range, and have enough rooms and random bits of space for communal good times as well. In fact, there seemed to be far too many rooms for what look, from the front, like quite narrow terraced houses. Oh yes, and one of them has a first floor conservatory, too. Random.

And so, today we embarked on a very exciting house viewing of these two properties; the Tardis, and Labyrinth.

First, The Tardis*.  This house looks a little different to others on the street, both inside and out. The owner has had great fun moving walls about inside, creating an awesomely wide and light hallway. There are 7 bedrooms, a dining room, kitchen, 3 bathrooms and an awesome basement with two windows. It also has a small garden, conservatory, a sun terrace on the second floor, and a large study area on the landing. The basement is enormous, and gets extra points for being the only one I've ever been in that doesn't stink of damp. In fact, it didn't smell at all - and neither did the rest of the house. A house in Swansea with no visible/smellable damp? You can imagine how impressed we were.

This house is different to others we've looked at on many levels. For one, it appears to have been reasonably well-loved and looked after. The owner seemed quite proud of it, and he didn't seem like a blagger, which made a nice change. The house felt; well, it felt like a home, and that is something I know our house will feel like. It was hard not to like it. It doesn't have any massive bedrooms or any teeny tiny ones. We'd all get an OK-ish amount of personal space, and lots and lots of varied communal space. Whether this suits everyone is still up for discussion.

We next went down the road to Labyrinth. Despite their similar size and location, the two houses couldn't have felt more different. Labyrinth has been HMOdified**, which is to say that every door is a fire door and thus shut all the time, that there are numerous extra internal walls making even large spaces feel small and boxy, and that the kitchen smelt weird. Such is the way of the HMO. 

It's currently split into two flats, with the bottom flat having a huge living room, small kitchen and bathroom in the basement, and then 3 bedrooms on the ground floor. The top flat has 3 bedrooms, a kitchen and bathroom, and a living room. The room sizes are more varied here, but there weren't any absurdly small rooms, just some a little smaller than we'd like. There was a bigger garden here, but no other extraneous areas.

Were we to live here, we'd have the whole ground floor as communal space, which would be awesome. In The Tardis the space is more split up into different areas, but there's also more of it. It's so hard to work out which is more important sometimes, but such is the way of buying houses. We are always trying to think of what will work best for the long-term of the co-op, and that does mean making tricky judgements.

After the viewing we went back to Cassian's for a debrief/squeebrief***. This involved, amongst other things, deciding the houses' names (for bloggity purposes) and determining that choosing between them was somewhat akin to a fight between David Tennant and David Bowie. Cue rubbish artwork.

Less importantly, rough floor plans were drawn and pros and cons debated, and it turns out that we see merit in them both. We're going to go for second viewings, and try to get more detailed measurements for The Tardis, which had some hilariously inaccurate ones in the particulars. We're going to do some investigating of market values, and re-work the business plan to see how it goes with both houses. We're going to have a meeting; the first of many, if we decide to go for one or the other.

As Joe so pointedly said, here we go again.

Hannah




* It's not only named for the TARDIS because it's bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside, but also that if you painted it blue, it would have a slight similarity. Honest.
** I made this word up today, and had to use it :)
*** Another word I made up today. Clearly I'm on a roll.

House Viewing: Igor-To-Sell

Another quick house viewing post, and I promise it's not an exciting one. In the period of gloom between giving up on Mould Mansion and the auction, Sven spotted Igor-To-Sell on Rightmove. It turns out Lotte had seen it before, but we'd not been keen to see it as it was over our budget and doesn't have much garden to speak of. Still, we needed cheering up and you never know what lies behind the front door of a property, so we decided to give it a look. The estate agent described the vendor as "eager to sell". This bit is important later.

Bless the man showing it to us (the eponymous Igor), he was a very good guide around the property, and to be fair, it was quite nice (in places). It's actually owned by a company of some sort, who currently let it out (and please bear in mind that it's a 6 bedroom house and one bedroom flat) to one woman, because it doesn't meet the HMO regulations. They currently use the downstairs flat to store more tea towels than I've ever seen in my life. That bit never got explained. Neither did the fact that the estate agent hadn't mentioned the attached double garage which doesn't come with the property, even though they share a flat roof.

Hmm.

Size-wise it was fine, but it had no garden and was too expensive for us. On top of that, it's not for sale.

Say what?

Yep. On the way out Igor told us that, bemusing though he found it, his mad scientist masters had put the house on the market to "test the water". They're actually in the process of getting quotes to turn it into either a HMO or self-contained flats. It was only put on the market (and at what seems to us an over-inflated price) to see if they could get silly money for it.

Eager to sell, indeed.

This seems to me to highlight, rather neatly, yet more of the foibles of property as a speculative commodity. In order to see if they could squeeze unreasonable money out of someone, on their way to squeezing a lovely rental profit out of some other people, this company has told the current tenant that they might have to leave at any time. Her housing situation is insecure in either case because some distant company, apparently against the advice of their local Igor, wants to make as much money as possible. Because of their unwillingness to spend money to upgrade the property, a 7 bedroom property in a popular (and expensive to rent in) area has been occupied by only one tenant. Something is wrong here.

I cannot wait until we have a co-op house, and can hopefully inspire there to be another housing co-op in Swansea. And another. And another, ad infinitum.

House Viewing: Rebound House and Liberties Lodge

Two quick updates about house viewings we have had in the last few days. I'm afraid there are no pictures as both houses are occupied, and although this means you often get to nose about in other people's book collections, it also means you can't take photos and post them on the tubes. Sad times.

Anyway, these were both unsuitable - on paper and in reality - but they did remind us that there are more houses in the world and that we will find one soon, honest. Rebound House (I couldn't think of a pithier name) was a reasonably bog standard Swansea terrace. Three stories high, split into 3 flats and currently a HMO, it was one of the nicer versions of rented accommodation to be seen locally. This lack of mange was reflected in the price tag, unfortunately, but had it been gorgeous we could possibly have stretched to it.

Alas, a thorough look round led us to the inevitable conclusion that it just isn't big enough for us at present, let alone having any space to expand. Biscuits of doom. The undeniably keen estate agent seemed to enjoy telling us that we could never possibly get a house to fit us in the area, and we'd have to settle for something smaller. Alas, we know this not to be the case, and I'm afraid I went home wishing that Mould Mansion could somehow be ours, yet again.

 Liberties Lodge is called that because the vendor is, quite frankly, taking liberties. This was a strange house for us. Set in (what appeared to be) large grounds approximately 5 miles out of Swansea, it's an ex care home with 16 bed rooms. These are all rented out, although they share only one kitchen, but because it's out of town and only on two storeys it is exempt from HMO legislation. Nice.

Although there were a ridiculous number of rooms and a surfeit of conservatories, there was also a smell of mildew, little natural light, and the Strange Case of The Missing Garden. The vendor also owns the property next door, and her drive runs through the garden of the Lodge. She has, in her wisdom, decided to keep the driveway (not unreasonable) and all the garden on the other side of it. Essentially Liberties Lodge sits on the little island of it's own garden, marooned in a sea of someone else's. Bizarre. I hope she finds someone who's not keen on gardening to buy this place from her, but it clearly won't be us.

A couple of us are going to the auction on Wednesday to see what Mould Mansion goes for. This might be slightly torturous, but I can't resist my own morbid curiosity to see what might have been. And of course, it may not even sell. Hope springs eternal, eh?

And in the meantime, the search continues, so if anyone happens to find a 7 or 8 bedroom house down the back of the sofa, please do let us know.

Hannah