Strange & Unusual Houses

[smalex]

Gosh! £750 a month. Are there a lot of facilities there?

[Mayday]

It will have a health club, swimming pool, library and restaurant apparently. We are overrun with gyms and we have three pools in this small town already!

Oh and there is also ground rent of £500 a year on top of all that.

[Figaro]

Oh my God, I can't believe how expensive that flat is! I can imagine a flat in central London selling for that much with a similar service charge, but even then, it'd be on the steep side. Who's going to buy it?!

[rosy]

My great aunt lives in a block of retirement flats in Oxford - all 1 bedroom units which sell for £50,000 or thereabouts but have service charges of £1000 a month (a bit less for the flats that don't have direct access to the communal gardens). The service charge covers all the utilities, lunch and dinner, insurance, a library, a communal sitting room, an alarm system, a warden and laundry as well as all the upkeep and maintenance. I think the service charge is reasonable for what they get there as it's more like a hotel than a retirement block, and my aunt is very happy there. But if they charged more for the properties themselves it would be ridiculous.

[ParisGal]

Malvern town isn't even very nice I went last year and was expecting it to be much nicer.

[Livilla]

Something dodgy is going on in the conservatory of this house

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for ... 02128.html

Looks like the "single male owner aged 68" was a freelance currency trader or hedger, with that screen set up.

Rebs, only first charge mortgages on residential property and sale and rent back arrangements are regulated when it comes to property - the government's decision as they decide what is is a regulated activity and what is not. Which leaves plenty of room for scams around the edges, sadly.

[Ella]

I assumed he had a load of CCTV cameras .

[smalex]

I was stalking rightmove trying to work out what house my Step SIL and her BF have made an offer on, and hope it isn't this. http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for ... 45091.html

The inside is ok, its the outside! I'm not usually swayed by external appearance (my house shan't be gracing the cover of Country Living any time soon), but man, this is f'ugly. Was there a tax on windows at the time of construction?!

[Derek Nimmo]

That is nae bonny as our Scottish friends would say. Is it on a really busy road or something, so that as many windows as possible face the other way?

[smalex]

Its the main road through the (relatively quiet) area, so its not looking out at a motorway or a big dual carriageway or anything, no.

[Mayday]

Is it ex council Smalex? Not that they build ugly houses in general but I remember seeing some with that sort of window layout (there were more at the back) in the previous town I lived in.

[smalex]

If I had to guess I'd guess that it was Ex-council, MayDay, but I don't know.

Its reminded me of when I happened upon this lovely little bungalow (photo from streetview)

F'Ugly.png

[Mayday]

Oh, erm that is quite fugly too. Not much you could do with the kerb appeal of that one :lol:

[speedy gonzalez]

Roses, house name sign, massive train set & riverside view photos. I'm wondering what the kitchen and bathroom are like.
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for ... wcase=true

[Duophonic]

I was stalking rightmove trying to work out what house my Step SIL and her BF have made an offer on, and hope it isn't this. http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for ... 45091.html

The inside is ok, its the outside! I'm not usually swayed by external appearance (my house shan't be gracing the cover of Country Living any time soon), but man, this is f'ugly. Was there a tax on windows at the time of construction?!

There are a lot of these houses in my home town and in fact my eldest brother lives in one but ours are all £100k+ cheaper

[Mayday]

Roses, house name sign, massive train set & riverside view photos. I'm wondering what the kitchen and bathroom are like.
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for ... wcase=true

Oh! That has so much potential! I think I'd have to keep the train set

I think the absence of photos of the kitchen and bathroom is quite telling!

[Figaro]

They do talk about how you could potentially alter the kitchen in the blurb, too! But I agree it has loads of potential and given that it's got 5500 square feet of space, it's quite well priced. It sounds like it only has one bathroom for 6 bedrooms though :bob:

That railway room thing! There are so many boxes on the walls I half wondered if they were running some kind of mail order business :))

The setting is absolutely beautiful, but I would be terrified it would flood.

[rosy]

The train set! I think the boxes are just so they can pack all the engines and carriages away after each play.

You'd think they'd at least give you a bit more of an idea about the kitchen and bathroom.

I didn't realise for ages that the last paragraph on RM was intended to be a poem. It's published like this:

?Ouse House sits on Purfleet Quay where the River Ouse meets the sea ? in fact The Wash is its name, a body of water of East Anglian fame. This hidden treasure has given its owners unfathomable pleasure; approach by boat if you wish, on an incoming tide, then appreciate the lovely space inside, but best of all behind its sea wall are huge windows affording glorious views ? about this property one must enthuse.?

But with a few line breaks, it's worthy of any Hallmark card.

Ouse House sits on Purfleet Quay,
where the River Ouse meets the sea.
In fact The Wash is its name,
a body of water of East Anglian fame.
This hidden treasure
has given its owners unfathomable pleasure;
approach by boat if you wish, on an incoming tide,
then appreciate the lovely space inside,
but best of all
behind its sea wall
are huge windows affording glorious views
about this property one must enthuse.

[Figaro]

[smalex]

:lol:

It's such a lovely house. Even if the rooms are a mess it's so bizarre to show so few of them, while romantically photographing the exterior so many times.