Topic: The Chit Chat Thread

@ralphdibny The property I moved into the viewing was with one of the landlords, I was there for about an hour chatting her and the current tenant about the house, area and other stuff. Just added a personal touch. I must have made an impression, as they phoned me up a couple of days later to offer me the house.

All the other properties I viewed were with agents, and I was done in about 20 mins in each of them. They all felt pretty cold and clinical, with very little human aspect to it all. They might as well be androids for all I know!

@JohnnyShoulder haha @kyleforrester87 may well be an android with his inhuman ability to cycle all the way to Scotland from Cornwall!!!

Jokes aside though, that sounds like a really positive experience. Especially as they actually rang you to offer the property. Sounds like a great fit all round.

We actually turned down a property because the reasons behind a previous offer falling through seemed dodgy to us. Definitely weary of getting off to a bad start!

@ralphdibny ignore the sales pitch - Location, no crazy neighbours, decent water pressure, windows in a good state, mattress in a good state - if it ticks those boxes just go for it 😂

It amazes me how often tenants move in and complain that the original sash windows are chilly in the winter.. would you buy a convertible and moan you can’t get your fishing tackle in the back?

@ralphdibny I posted that before I saw @kyleforrester87 post!

When I was chatting to the then tenant, I made sure I asked about the area, how cold it gets, how much are the bills etc, so I got a good idea of waht to expect.

@kyleforrester87 yep that's more or less it! I've turned on countless showers lately 😂. Luckily I don't have to bring a blacklight as we are going unfurnished! Very weary of exterior unheated walls too and have seen lots of cleaned off mould in the properties that don't have radiators on exterior walls.

I am sure you are a perfectly scrupulous salesperson by the way and I apologise if any of my posts painted any generic group of people in a bad light. I did try to be specific so as to not tar every agent. Sometimes specificity comes off even worse though 😅. But yeah, kudos to you if you've ever had to deal with a prospective tenant like me who knows what they like and what to look for before saying yes like so many other people would do.

As long as the property does what it says on the tin and the tenants meet the expectations then hopefully there should be no problems! In theory (though I'm sure not in reality), there should be some value in a solid agreement like that instead of getting unhappy tenants into properties they don't want with unhappy landlords that don't want them and tenancies running short with a great amount of hassle for both sides as a result.

I don’t take it personally, you’re not the first to look down on us and won’t be the last 😂 All I would say try my job for a few months and see how you feel haha. And in the future, when you hopefully own a property (if that’s what you want, owning your place is never essential in my book) that you’re looking to sell, I can almost guarantee you’ll want your estate agent using all the “tricks in the book” (whatever they might be 😂) to get you the best possible price.

Anyway, my point was right now as a prospective tenant pickings are slim and you might need to act quick to secure something that is not perfect. In my view if it ticks “most boxes” go for it, it’s not a forever home.

@kyleforrester87 no worries and I don't look down on all of you! I definitely tried to keep an open mind going into this process even if I remained guarded and critical.

But yeah that's a fair point and I did think about that exact thing yesterday. I just don't know, to be honest. Obviously I want maximum money but I'd also want to do the right thing. I guess I can only hope (again naively) that whatever property I might end up selling in future would also be good value and both buyer and seller can get a good and fair deal. So yeah, mixed feelings on that one to be honest!

But yeah, we are going for a 9 out of ten approach. Things we need include a lot of space, either 2 bedrooms or 1 bedroom and a study, parking space, first floor or higher, exterior walls with radiators on, PVC double glazing, proximity to the station, good water pressure in the shower and a full size fridge freezer. Those things are of varying import so we might compromise on a couple less important aspects but may only compromise on one larger aspect.

I know it'll be slow but we will find somewhere! We've definitely seen goers for sure, just been too late. I think we've learned from that that we can make a quick decision if it ticks most of the big boxes but if it's a property that we have to take some time to think over then it's probably not one for us anyway!

Cheers for the advice tho!!

@ralphdibny it’s a numbers game, the right one will come along - just jump on it when it does 👍🏻

No matter how nice @ralphdibny is being, my estimation of @kyleforrester87 has definitely gone down after reading this page.

@Thrillho 😂 good job I have a thick skin….

@Thrillho @kyleforrester87 😂

@ralphdibny I randomly remembered you saying about a credit rating too. I assume you don’t have a credit card then?

I was told to get one to help with credit rating. As long as you use it instead of your debit card and pay it off in full at the end of the month you’ll be grand. Loads of rewards too; I’m with American Express with a cash back card which only gets me a few quid a year but it’s free money seeing as I immediately pay the card off.

@ralphdibny I was similarly over fussy and took me a good 6 months to get the place I'm in now. My old flat the hot water would be very low pressure (used to take about 10 mins to fill up the sink) so that was in the list. I had them all noted down on my phone and a bunch of questions I wanted to ask.

And yeah I didn't think it was possible to look further down on @kyleforrester87, but here were are now on an all new low!

@kyleforrester87 My wife worked in an estate agents for a while a few years back. It's no joke doing that job by the sounds of it.

The manager was a right character. Tenants would come in to complain about something that was wrong in their property and he would hide behind a desk in the back and get her to tell them he wasn't there. He would do this for weeks until the tenants would be absolutely furious, coming in and yelling "why is he never here?!". One day my wife couldn't take any more yelling and she threw open the office door to reveal the manager crouching in the corner. When the tenant left, the manager went nuts at her, calling her a pig, a cow, and various other things, not all of them animals. Funnily enough, she quit later that day.

Anyway, what I learned is that even if estate agents can sometimes be hard work, the problem may not actually be of their making. It may come from above, just like in many other walks of life.

@Thrillho nope, no lines of credit whatsoever. Only loan I ever took out was the student loan. I've certainly heard the same. It's something that I need to research fully though as I can't sign a contract or make an agreement unless I'm fully informed. There's a very confusing array of credit cards to choose from so I think I'll have to wait until I have a solid amount of time so I can sit down and look through all the options properly. It's unlikely to be soon though if I'm honest 😅

@JohnnyShoulder oh really, that's good to know there is some light at the end of the tunnel then! My partner actually fills out a form that we made as we look around the property, while I get a feel for it and look at areas I know could be problems such as exterior walls, corners, windows and bathrooms. It's a good system and we normally have a lot to discuss after we've finished a viewing.

Yeah water pressure is a really bugbear. I need a firm shower, not this lame trickle of water nonsense 😂. Honestly though, i can actually get irritation in certain areas if I don't have proper hard showers every day. The shower in my partner's flat is so weak that it can become problematic if i stay there for a long time

@Gremio108 Haha great. The industry does tend to attract a certain type of person, since you don't need to be qualified and the money can be really good. When it comes to dealing with maintenance stuff you can be stuck between a rock and a hard place if the landlord doesn't want to fork out for repairs. Ultimately the landlord is the client and you need to look after their interests first and foremost, providing they are being lawful, even if they are being an ass. I tend to not take any sh*t and talk straight with people and it works for me so far, I get good feedback and have been doing it for 13-14 years now. It can wear you down though when you have a landlord who won't fix something until the rent is paid and a tenant who won't pay rent until something is fixed, and they are both just blaming you for "not doing your job"!!

@ralphdibny The shower was actually OK in my old place as it was an electric one, just the hot water from the taps was lame.

Back when I rented, I complained a few times about the bathroom ceiling because it had damp on it and occasionally leaked. The landlady kept saying she'd do something about it but didn't get round to it. Then one day the ceiling in the bathroom collapsed. If you looked up you could see the sky.

This, of course, got the landlady to spring into action, hiring an absolute cowboy to come around, spurs janglin', to plaster it all back up. I'm not a plasterer by trade but even I could tell he hadn't done a particularly good job. He didn't even put protection down or anything. There was plaster everywhere. He got halfway through it and asked if he could finish the rest another day because it was 4.30pm and he wanted to go home for his tea. He looked sad when I said I'd prefer him to finish it since there was a hole in my ceiling.

A while later, a painter came round to paint over the plastered bit where the damage had occurred. He laughed when he saw the plastering. He was painting over it, and I said, "That bit on the wall over there needs a little bit of painting too where the dirty water has stained it after the ceiling fell in." He said, "I can see, yeah. But the landlady specifically told me to paint only the ceiling and not touch any walls because that would be extra money."

Predictably, when I was leaving the house the ceiling was once again getting damp, and the paint was peeling away. I often wonder if there's some poor sap sat on the pot in there now, flicking through Facebook on their phone, only for the ceiling to collapse on their head.

@kyleforrester87 Ha yeah, she had a few of those situations too. She'd get a lot of disputes between landlord and tenant which were a bit of a catch 22. One landlord came in once because their tenant had ripped their entire lawn and garden out, and covered it in decking.

It sounds like your approach is good. I think it's one of those jobs where if you've managed to keep at it for years, you're either a solid, honest person, or a psychopath. We'll put you in the former camp, for now at least. Pending further evidence.

@RogerRoger Yeah, it's a sad fact of life that the people who get the flak for things are rarely the cause. Half the jobs I've ever done wouldn't have been as interesting without dealing with angry people though!

@johncalmc "If you looked up you could see the sky."

I can already hear Kyle spinning this as a selling point to the next potential tenant.

Exactly, who doesn’t want to look up and see the sky. Stop moaning.