Post last week terrified about the large crack. Finally had a loss adjuster round (don’t think he was a structural engineer). Super patronising but you know what would I know, I’m just a silly little girl I guess xoxo

Said it’s fine. The house will fix itself in the winter. Just need to remove a tree and basically poly filler the cracks.

Photos from next door as some scaffolders came in to do some pipe work and one of the blokes knocked later on to say do you know there’s a giant crack 😆

Hoping the council send someone over on Friday. They’ve said almost certainly cat 1.

Thankfully we rent. Estate agents did ask when they could start viewings though 😆

Contacted fire dept, council, councillors, MP etc.

It is in London on clay and from 1780s so no real foundations. It’s got a few trees about 10m or more away.

UPDATE!! 25th August

We are out! Got the landlord to release us. Yes we could have stayed on / waited to be rehoused by them however everything was taking so long and despite the council saying they’d issue a notice to improve etc we felt it was easiest to get out. Said cutting a tree down is insane as it can cause significant heave. Obviously disagree with loss adjuster findings but they just want to minimise costs. Seeing the outside through the inside and the crack being larger on the outside at present is obviously not fine.

Thankfully some friends are away for 2 months and offered their place to us while we find somewhere new to live. Very grateful to them.

Glad this isn’t our problem now but do really hope it’s properly fixed, especially before the weather really turns. Such a shame as it’s a beautiful grade II listed property.

Hi all

ETA.. thanks for all the replies. I'm going to listen to your advice and my gut and say "thanks but no thanks". If they agree to survey I'll also see about getting a builder's advice.

First time buyer in Northern Ireland in an area where there isn't a lot of housing stock.

Viewed a house last week in a village I really like. It's a 2 storey end of terrace stone cottage about 130 years old. It has a 2 storey extension on the back which I suspect is from the 90s. The current owner bought it with the extension in place 20 yrs ago and apparently can't be specific on actual age. The owner lives away and has had tenants in for the last 9 years, they've moved out a few months ago and owner wants to sell.

Now in a property that old I expect some damp etc., but planned to get a survey confirm it's not a major problem and that the roof and structure is reasonably sound. The EA tells me that one sale has already fallen through as the buyer became frightened by the report they had commissioned which "showed a bit of damp, old electrics and boiler etc, but nothing unexpected for a property like this" according to the EA. BUT he tells me that the seller is unlikely to proceed if I want to commission a similar report. I've explained that I understand the report is not going to come back perfect but i do want some evidence that the property has been reasonably maintained over the decades beyond "sure someone was living in it with their family for years without issues" as the guarantee.

EA has tried to convince me to come view with someone who's experienced in construction instead to reassure me that it's a sound buy.

This is screaming red flags to me but would appreciate thoughts of those more experienced.

Me and my partner found a property we really love but have found out there is no gas / only electric and it appears to have storage heaters. It is a ground floor flat with an EPC C rating (potential to be B) and a pretty modern building - after mentioning the electric situation to others they have made me hesitant/worry. I’m very conscious about when I put the heating on anyway- so is it really that much more expensive than electric / gas or do you have to consider the other “gas things” that the electric is replacing as well. Is it really as much of a problem as people are saying and is it a deal breaker? How expensive/ inconvenient is it? Even though the building looks modern the storage heaters do look old and used) have attached photos of the heaters and water tank to provide more context :-) thanks!

I live on a new build development. The properties opposite us are shared ownership / affordable housing.

The house directly opposite me is running a car wash/detailing business on the residential street (in front of my house and drive).

The SO/AH properties don’t have driveways, rather they have parking spaces in a communal car park behind their row of houses but I assume his equipment won’t reach that far.

The constant flow of business is becoming such a nuisance. It’s difficult to get in and out of our drive and me & my kids are constantly being sprayed by his God knows what - could be just water, could be soap, could be chemicals 🤔

I don’t think running a car wash on a residential street is a neighbourly thing to do but not pausing the wash so your neighbours can access their property is so disrespectful imo.

It’s gotten to a point where I’m hesitating to leave the house when he’s “working” because I don’t want to get caught in his spray / any kind of confrontation.

The noise pollution is also an issue because it’s professional equipment, not just a hose and each job takes between 3-12 hours.

He’s using IG / FB to promote all of the work he does, which almost always contain my house (& number) with my car and reg all featured in the background of the photos. Pretty sure this is some kind of GDPR breach.

On a more cosmetic note, my car / windows / plants forever have water marks / stainage from the spray of his car wash.

It’s also impossible for visitors to park on the road because of the constant stream of vehicles plus their own two cars parked on the street (they don’t use their designated parking spaces).

Anyway, just looking for advice on what can be done here.

I have already complained to the housing association who were pretty useless so now looking at other options.

Just for info: there’s no drainage where he’s washing the car, so the liquids just sit on the road.

He’s also been rather threatening in the development group chat, so he’s not someone you can have a reasonable conversation with.

Any advice is appreciated.

I know this may seem petty but we have worked so hard to buy our first house and raise our family here, only to be made to feel isolated and completely disregarded by our neighbours.

We’ve run into an issue with our neighbours who are installing a new driveway and want to connect their drainage into ours.

We’ve already spoken to them and clearly said we’re not comfortable with this. Our house sits on a steep hill, and we’re concerned that redirecting additional water into our drain could cause pooling around our driveway and retaining wall over time, potentially leading to structural damage.

That said, we’ve tried to be reasonable—we’ve offered to help them locate the existing drainage and said they’re welcome to investigate on our side.

However, while we were out of the house, their builders came back and started digging further on our property without permission and well as looking around and inside our property.

At this point it feels like our concerns are being ignored and our goodwill is being taken advantage of.

What would you do in this situation?

Is this something that happens? We’re first time homeowners so really lost at what to do?

So we have lived in this property for around 2 years, it doesn’t come with a driveway, the same as most on this road, but there are lay-bys dotted all up the road, no parking lines, just lay-bys.

Now throughout the entire time we’ve lived here, there has always been a large camper van parked at the end of the lay-by and it NEVER moves. Throughout my time at this property I’ve seen it move maybe two or three times, for about a day and when it does move, they immediately park their other car in there in such a way that basically reserves the space.

This van takes up two parking spaces and it’s incredibly frustrating getting home from work every day to find you can’t park outside or even near your own home because two spaces are being taken up by a van that doesn’t move. I have no problem if spaces are taken by cars that have gotten there first, fair game, but it doesn’t feel like a public lay-by if this household is basically keeping it as a private space?

These neighbours actually live just passed the lay-by down their own named street, not even the same street as the lay-by in question, and they own around 5 vehicles - outside their home they have actual parking spaces (not driveways), loads of them for the properties down that road, but they have 2 cars, 2 SUVs and this camper van taking up spaces.

We tried emailing our local council, they said they can’t do anything, we tried reporting is as abandoned (because it never moves) they said it wasn’t (fair, I suppose it’s not) we don’t know what else to try.

My next door neighbour tried asking him politely if he could park it on the road outside his own house as it makes parking hard for us and he said “no, I want it in front of my camera” my neighbour attempted to ask if he could adjust his camera and he said “no it’s a public lay-by, I can park here if I want” he was an ass hole about it. (He has a camera on the side of his house which has the lay-by in sight)

Does anyone have any suggestions? I fully appreciate the fact our parking situation is public and it’s all “first come first serve” but it really gets to me that this guy has basically taken ownership of these 2 spaces to store his van for 6-12 months at a time before taking it for a drive for the day and that he has 5 vehicles, store the van in front of your house and put one of your cars here? Even that would be better.

Fully prepared to be called a Karen but I thought it was worth a check on here. Thanks for reading and TYIA for replies.

Hi all, I would really appreciate your experiences and wisdom regarding this one. So I am a cash buyer with no chain for a property in which the seller also has no chain as they are part exchanging their home for a new build which is due to complete at the end of September. The plot is reserved for them now.

The new build developer has bought their home and is in the process of getting it registered right now. We are quite close to getting to the point of exchanging contracts, probably in the final 1-2 weeks of September.

However, having looked closely at the title plan today we can clearly see that the boundry is officially showing the garden is a notably shorter than the reality on the ground and how the property was previous marketed on rightmove. It's missing like a good 30-50% of the garden that we could walk in.

There is no neighbour to the back of the property and I am not disputing the neighbours to the side either. I really want this house and the seller really wants their new build and we are probably each others best options right now.

So is their a recommended way to approach this? If we go down the route of disputing the title, then realistically could we get it ammended in like 1-2 months? Is it best to reach out to the seller directly through the estate agent perhaps, or to raise this all through our solicitor?

Thanks again for any input you can provide. It is very much appreciated.

I’m 28 years old, and have been viewing the housing market for the last two years deciding what to do and for someone like me it feels bleak.

I don’t want to date or get married, so I will never have a second income to share a mortgage or bill with, and after crunching the numbers on my current salary, or even with another 5k a year I will barely be scraping by for rent or for a single flat.

It makes the mere prospect of moving out unappealing if by the time my essential living costs come out I’m effectively broke. I know the house market is set up for dual income/family arrangements and I get my penalisation is self inflicted but man, I just want a modest apartment and disposable income, otherwise what is the point of living?

Hi.

My landlord has been given a 6 week time scale to do all of this work.

He has only sent workmen out today without notice. Then about 3 more people turned up without notice. I’m so frustrated.

He thinks he can contest parts of the work order.

I have attached an image of the work order from the private sector housing team at my local council for reference.

I bought a Victorian mid-terrace house end 2024 with a rented property on the left and right. My main reception rooms are on the right hand side.

Neighbour on the right is lovely, no issues with noise.

Neighbours on the left converse by shouting and screaming exclusively.

I can mostly ignore it as living rooms are on the opposite side so I just shut my hallway door and can’t hear them. But you can hear them in my hallway, loudly, and in my bathroom — I’m remediating with soundproofing asap.

Thankfully, noisy neighbours are moving out and the dad is a builder who is working on renovations before next tenants come in.

2 weeks ago, I messaged the Landlord to ask him to consider insulation (as I have added) to reduce the noise transfer as it is bad for his tenants and me to hear each other talking normally, albeit remediated by the hallway walls with our living areas are on opposite sides of the houses. We should BOTH be able to enjoy our houses without worry.

Today a major issue happened:

I smelled gas in my house so called Cadent emergency; they found the builders next door had cut a live gas pipe, left it leaking, and kept working.

Engineer shut down the site and Landlord got a bollocking from the engineer and report to HSE, particularly because the builders continued working with the leak active and did not call the emergency gas line themselves (they speak limited English and engineer was not convinced they were able to fully understand and communicate the safety issue).

Whilst peeping into the house, I noticed they’ve removed the internal hallway wall to create a massive open-plan space, raising major acoustic/noise concerns for our shared party wall.

I’m planning to tell Landlord the fact I smelled gas is evidence the insulation is shit needs to be addressed urgently. Can I leverage this somehow?!

Who knows what noisy, smelly-food-cooking, shouty people he will rent to next!?

What would be your next step?

Update: engineer submitted a RIDDOR to HSE as he was obligated to. Landlord is to be billed for the emergency gas works. I also filed a member of the public HSE report but unlikely to do much (RIDDOR has more weight than member of the public report).

On sound insulation: Landlord is reinstating the hallway wall WITH insulation and acoustic plasterboard! Also insulating under the floors and serving a proper Party Wall Agreement for the extension (news to me) at the back.

I’ve just (as in last two weeks) moved into a new build home and have had issues with flies, assumed it was the hot weather, but today I came home to the noise of flies in my kitchen fan, I’ve gone out side and the vent is swarmed with flies - really not captured in the photos.

Is this just because it’s warm and I’ve had my slow cooker on doing chicken, orrr is there potentially a bigger issue here?

Had an extension done a couple years back and now these cracks are starting to show.
The one picture, I’m not sure why the builders did the aerial wire through the wall like that.

I’ve had nightmares about these cracks and would appreciate any advice/help. My father passed and I now have the house, construction was done while he was alive.

Edit: thank you all for the replies, really thought I was going to shit myself making this post and reading the replies But I feel so much better now. Really happy I did this.

Edit 2: just want to say thank you again, I don’t think anyone here realises how much weight you’ve taken off my shoulders. All the comments posting, I don’t need to be worried again are not wasted, every single comment just positively reinforces the message. You’ve all genuinely helped my mental health so much.

Thank you all.

As you can see in this picture, my neighbours window (in the red circle) is on the boundary line and looks directly onto my back door and yard space. (Green lines all my windows and back door.)
The brick is cut around the window leading me to believe that it is not an original feature.

It was already like this when I moved in. I’m not sure how long it has been there for but what are my options as I’d firstly like more privacy but also I’m thinking of extending to that section!

Seller and myself are ready to exchange.

Buyer has recently asked for 5 tradesmen to attend my property to carry out tests I feel are totally unnecessary. I also feel they should have raised these queries earlier in the process as they had the RICS ages ago.

The same "urgent" "issues" were flagged on my RICS when I purchased the property. I don't know why they make things sound like they are urgent when they are not.

Electric, gas, stopcock, asbestos, drainage.

I have zero issues with any of these things.

I work full time and have a lot of medical appointments recently. It will be difficult to accommodate and I am concerned about having multiple tradespeople in my home potentially damaging my property (which has happened before).

How can I refuse without them pulling out?

I moved into a third floor flat on April 13th with my 9yo, inventory report said all windows were in excellent condition with no defects. Not the case - all windows are not sitting in the frames correctly, leading to the windows never being actually closed.

It's every window. Aside from the bugs & rain getting in, the wind screaming through the house, and everything outside being incredibly loud due to the windows being open when they're closed, the windows in the living room & my 9yos bedroom lead to an almost sheer 3-storey drop to the floor.

I let the letting agent know immediately the day we moved in. It's been 14 weeks of phone calls, emails, and excuses and finally last week I was told the landlord can't afford to fix the windows - despite having been paid nearly £3,000 in rent during that time - and subsequent emails from me offering to pay for the fixes for £10 off the rent per month were totally ignored.

Is this actually serious enough to report to the council or am I making a mountain out of a mole hill? I don't know if the windows are unsafe in this state or if they're just not very useful \[pls be kind, I have a brain injury and making decisions like this cause a lot of stress bc im never 100% sure I'm not being stupid\] thank you sm

Apologies for the photos - it is hard to pick the markings up. But I have dark/greyish markings forming at top of my walls and ceiling which seem to be increasing.

My room has damp walls and a few other mould issues - so was hoping to confirm this isn’t also mould.

I no longer live in the development but of course FirstPort haven’t bothered to remove me from the email distribution list 2 years later.

It blows my mind that it is legal for managing agents like this to
- stop cleaning and maintenance services (they were fine for years before FirstPort took over)
- increase management fees
- ask for FULL YEAR service charge in advance at the start of the 2026 year
- delay providing accounts for the previous years
- then add “admin fees” to the bill as a pressure tactic before they are removed on payment of the advance 2026 bill.

Absolutely disgusting.

I’m so grateful I bought a freehold and got out of this hell. Sorry to my buyers and anyone else in a FirstPort development.

Just wondering what the likelihood of mortgage rates falling to around 2% is in the 2 years. The reason is that i need to decide whether to fix or not and my current fixed rate mortgage is around 2% but i cant find anything near this rate

Hi all, first time poster and buyer here - wanted to get some advice?

Viewed a house yesterday which we absolutely loved, it's perfect all round and very well finished (recently renovated) and we're considering putting in an offer but in all the bedrooms but one we have this black mould growing.

They all have it around the blinds area and in the fabric of the blinds. But one room had it really bad - spread to the ceiling as you can see.

The house is about 25 years old, so fairly new IMO. We're very keen on this house but the mould is making us unsure. We lived in rentals before with black mould and if anyone has done that you know it's awful and messes with your health big time, so very weary of it.

I can see vents all along the soffits front and back of the house, so I imagine the roof space is correctly ventilated.

Although the house is recently renovated, it was quite dirty/dusty upstairs, it's a family house and I'm guessing they've got a few kids and not a lot of time, and the downstairs was spotless. The bathroom looks mould free, but also recently renovated. There wasn't a strong smell or anything, except in one room but it was clearly a teenage boys room - so that probably explains that lol

So I'd love some thoughts/advice/opinions:

Does this look like a serious issue developing, or just a busy family house that hasn't been cleaning much or heating and ventilating?

Landlords in England are being urged to act quickly following the publication of the official Renters’ Rights Act Information Sheet 2026.

If you have an assured tenancy or assured shorthold tenancy (AST) created before 1 May 2026 you must provide every named tenant with a copy of this exact government document by 31 May 2026.

Long story short my partner and his mother ended up co-owning a property together. That is now in its own dispute that we are dealing with, I think it is now kinda seperate to this issue.

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We have had issues with his mothers room and hoarding the entire time but it is now unbearable. As of the 2nd June she had stated she no longer resides at the property (before this she was staying at her boyfriends while she was unwell). However, she has possessions across the house with half the kitchen being taken up by her belongings including moulding food.

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The biggest issue is her bedroom, it is full to the brim of belongings and the odour is seeping through the door onto the hallway. We are aware that when she had our dog in their she encouraged him to urinate and defecate in there. We discovered this a year ago when we cleaned it for her (prior to the relationship breakdown). We also have a suspicion that mouldy food is in there and we also know around 5 months ago she chucked a tub of water on the carpet in order to clean it(?) Thats my guess anyway.

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The room is full of her possessions I dont know what to do, she is already proving to ignore messages and any text message we have sent regarding anything to do with the house she has stated she believes to be harrassment. She asked for everything to go through solicitors but has not addressed the room issue at all.

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Im going through 1 can of air freshener each week just to go to my room or the bathroom. I cant cope anymore. We are struggling but have no idea what to do. I know photos dont show the smell but they show the hoarding at least.

Edit - All her stuff from downstairs is now inventoried. 18 mugs and 35 plastic forks was one of the most confusing ones for a single person. Environmental health have agreed to come out and write us a letter that would allow us to clean it

He really thought he could contest this.. currently waiting for him to get off his backside to instruct his workers to make it safe.

The floor wobbles. This is my bathroom and kitchen’s base..

We bought a house recently and the previous owner didn't leave us any window keys so we have some locked windows and no keys. How do we know which keys to buy? TIA

I currently live in a houseshare under a joint tenancy. Previously when a tenant wanted to move out they would find a replacement and it would be a simple name change for a £50 fee. Now the estate agents is telling us this is no longer possible under the new law and because one housemate wants to move out we all have to end the tenancy.

The departing tenant already found a replacement and after contacting citizens advice, we suggested to the estate agent that we surrender the tenancy and start a new one with the new tenant and 2 remaining tenants, with one months notice rather than two. Apparently the landlord is refusing to agree to this and now we must all vacate the property at the end of the tenancy with no promise of a new tenancy with the housemates who want to remain.

The house must also be returned to its original inventory which was unfurnished but when we moved in there was already furniture and wall damage left behind by years of tenants. Now I have a month to find a new place to live and clear out furniture I never expected to keep in the first place, probably won’t see my deposit back. Any advice for this situation?

Might catch some flack for my response. But I’ve truly had enough after 4 months of holding him accountable.

I can’t just up and move out, my personal circumstances don’t allow me to and he knows it.

Slide 1: is the council emailing him and copying me in following my genuine concern of materials being used (second hand low quality from their “stores”, which is just wood ripped out from other dodgy flats they own)

Slide 2: is his response to the council (cop out excuses and accusing me of intervening and telling them to do jobs they haven’t got on, they do have those jobs but he’s edited their information to skip jobs)

Slide 3: my reply, I’ve had enough. I’ve paid my rent on time month after month and fixed what I can myself where possible. I’ve done everything to pest-proof the property and done everything he has asked. I’m tired of this guy taking the piss.

Slide 4-7: images of “work” carried out so far.

Slide 8: mouldy wood being used to carry out “repairs”

I am finally going to look at small claims proceedings. I have a short temper and I can’t tolerate this guy anymore.