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Lungboy posted:Seconding a broker for a first timer, ask around any people you know who own a house and find who they went with as personal recommendations. Lots of brokers are free as they get paid by the mortgage company, so make sure to find one you like. Also my broker actively contacted me when my first fixed term was up for renewal and helped me find the next one, so a good broker will not only be useful when you buy, but later down the line too. I can't remember if I heard about my broker from a colleague or the estate agents I was renting from , but she was a local independent broker. Angrymog fucked around with this message at 04:48 on Aug 9, 2022 |
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Aug 9, 2022 04:45
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Angrymog posted:Also my broker actively contacted me when my first fixed term was up for renewal and helped me find the next one, so a good broker will not only be useful when you buy, but later down the line too. This, mine contacted me in april and pushed to get things set up for my September change - we got the mortgage locked in for 10 of the (now) remaining 11 years right before the first interest rise. So we pretty much don't need to worry about interest rates ever again. As an added bonus, as they took the mortage amount still outstanding in April, and the new one doesn't start until September, we have effectively built up 5 months of "free" payments, so we will be getting a huge chunk back which I can then overpay on the new mortgage streight away - by my calculations it will wipe out the debt that will be remaining by year 11. I would never have thought of any of that by myself!
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Aug 9, 2022 05:15
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As a counterpoint to the survey issue, I'd never bother again with an official survey, much better off if you know a good builder to take them along instead. We paid out for a full structural survey and it was utterly useless. They mentioned every other type of survey going to cover their own arses and couldn't even get the basics right, like declaring the wall ties were failing on a house with no cavity walls. You also can't guarantee you'll be able to tag along with them.
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Aug 9, 2022 06:40
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Danger - Octopus! posted:Wasn't sure where to ask this question, but figured this was the best place.. I'm finally (in my mid 40s admittedly) looking at being able to afford a deposit and buy somewhere rather relying on landlords deciding not to convert where I live to an airbnb. I have no idea where to even start though, since I've been renting all my life, and most of my friends and family bought a long time ago so aren't really up on the way things work currently. I'd advise getting a mortgage broker, as they will do most of the heavy lifting with securing finance and can provide good advice to someone who knows nothing. As part of the service they'll also usually keep an eye on the local market for you, and flag up properties that they think meet your criteria. They'll also negotiate the sale on your behalf (ours talked us out of offering 5 grand too much for example and closed the sale basically just above the asking price). They also arranged home insurance, wills and set us up with a solicitor at a good rate to do all the conveyancing. You can probably do all this yourself, but for a couple of hundred it's worth it just to get someone who knows what they're doing to do it all for you. keep punching joe fucked around with this message at 08:16 on Aug 9, 2022 |
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Aug 9, 2022 07:33
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Lungboy posted:As a counterpoint to the survey issue, I'd never bother again with an official survey, much better off if you know a good builder to take them along instead. We paid out for a full structural survey and it was utterly useless. They mentioned every other type of survey going to cover their own arses and couldn't even get the basics right, like declaring the wall ties were failing on a house with no cavity walls. You also can't guarantee you'll be able to tag along with them.
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Aug 9, 2022 07:42
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keep punching joe posted:I'd advise getting a mortgage broker, as they will do most of the heavy lifting with securing finance and can provide good advice to someone who knows nothing. As part of the service they'll also usually keep an eye on the local market for you, and flag up properties that they think meet your criteria. I would advise a mortgage broker too, ours was free because he doesn’t charge first time buyers (brokers get paid a fee by the mortgage provider, it’s outrageous that they get away with charging the customer as well), and he got us tens of thousands more than we were getting on our own. We literally wouldn’t be in the house I’m posting this from if it hadn’t been for his help. I don’t know where you live, but if it’s anywhere near London, I’m sure I can dig up his details and send them to you…
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Aug 9, 2022 07:43
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Brokers will also be familiar with the various lenders, and which ones do a full credit check. You can impact your credit rating negatively just by having multiple full checks on your credit score. They'll only make applications for mortgages if they're 99% sure of success. Also they should have access to better property databases, so can identify houses that have maybe been on the market for a few months. Usually these are victim to the algorithm and fall down the listing pages on RightMove /Zoopla etc. So you may get a better deal if you're the only interested buyer. keep punching joe fucked around with this message at 08:00 on Aug 9, 2022 |
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Aug 9, 2022 07:56
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Scientastic posted:I would advise a mortgage broker too, ours was free because he doesn’t charge first time buyers (brokers get paid a fee by the mortgage provider, it’s outrageous that they get away with charging the customer as well), and he got us tens of thousands more than we were getting on our own. We literally wouldn’t be in the house I’m posting this from if it hadn’t been for his help. I'd be up for this too if possible. We're viewing houses in London at the minute and have a few decisions in principle, but we're pretty clueless about what happens once we actually decide to put an offer down.
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Aug 9, 2022 08:22
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WhatEvil posted:As for nuclear energy, base loads and that... there is (I think) some hope that everybody will get electric cars, and those can act as grid storage, with bi-directional charging, which is becoming more of a thing. Depending on your energy usage and size of car I think you could get 1-4 days of average home energy use off a single car battery charge. You could set this up, but every time electricity is transferred there's a loss factor. Charging your car with enough energy to run your home for 4 days would probably use enough energy to run your home for 5 days, after LLFs in both directions are accounted for.
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Aug 9, 2022 08:28
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WhatEvil posted:I've used an independent broker for every time I've mortgaged/remortgaged - 4 times in total now. Saved me a packet every time. There's not enough lithium in the world to do that and as Jedit says you're wasting power in the process.
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Aug 9, 2022 09:08
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Child slaves digging in the ground for stuff to make Teslas with is a such a liberal solution to climate change, the solution we deserve.
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Aug 9, 2022 09:16
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They're looking at sodium ion batteries as a less power dense much lower cost companion to lithium ion. We're not running out of sodium. 
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Aug 9, 2022 09:19
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Gort posted:I mean, obviously Ted Cruz is full of poo poo, but the situation in Germany is a long way from a good one. They're firing up the coal plants to fill the hole being left by Russian gas. And gas filled the hole left by nuclear. Cant have renewables without fossil fuel backups and cheap large scale energy storage is about out there with fusion becoming commercially viable. We're having expensive as all gently caress power now and that's mainly because we shut down a lot of nuclear capacity in europe and replaced with with Wind. Which sure, generates real cheap energy when it's blowing, but when it's not we need fossil fuels and they OTOH are expensive. This volatility creates on average much higher electricity prices, as we have now historically observed. This recipe for disaster lead do the very harsh winter of 2021 when the wind hardly blew and temperatures dropped, it was particularly noticeable in Sweden which has shut down a lot of nuclear capacity and relied on wind. People actually bought fuel oil and shut off their heat pumps because it was cheaper. They had to fire up an oil burning power plant too when it got real cold and the government had to hand out money to people. Sweden was a society that was highly electrified running on a combo of nuclear and hydro, extremely good situation for them to be in which was possible thanks to their cheap and abdundant electricity. Now that's unraveling. People are buying wood heaters, pellets and also fuel oil. Now the french have half their fleet down due to deferred maintenance of their aging fleet and it supported both france and a lot of the continent with power and winter is coming and we're still nowhere near a working system that can supply the energy needed when it's cold and no wind. Saying renewables are cheap is an insane oversimplifcation which in capitalist terms, ignores all the externalities I just mentioned, which wind power companies don't have to pay for at all. And the state news agency YLE, here in Finland are literally varning of the possibility of rolling blackouts this winter and providing energy saving tips for people. Energy experts have said we have basically one hail mary and that's Olkiluoto 3 coming online this december.
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Aug 9, 2022 09:25
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From that chart seems to me that some sort of mix of water/oxygen batteries are the way to go. ...Oh the machines from the matrix knew what they were doing after all. Sweet, lets just do that.
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Aug 9, 2022 09:27
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Olkilutefisk Boiling Whitefish Reactor
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Aug 9, 2022 09:30
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If we're serious about conserving resources, nuclear requires the least steel and concrete per kWh.
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Aug 9, 2022 09:31
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So the anti-nuclear green lobby just patsies of Big Oil?
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Aug 9, 2022 09:39
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Or Big Glass Fossil fuel disinformation seems to operate a bit like Dugin's idea of Russian disinformation, throw all sorts of poo poo out there at all different levels, from "wind turbines cause ear cancer" to "there's not enough CO2 in the atmosphere" to "climate change is a depopulation hoax" to "nuclear is dangerous" to "you can run a grid entirely on renewables" to "renewables aren't worth it" and everybody argues with each other and the status quo remains.
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Aug 9, 2022 09:47
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Z the IVth posted:So the anti-nuclear green lobby just patsies of Big Oil? No, they're just neoliberal Luddite morons. They do have legitimate concerns about the handling of nuclear waste, but those are averted by putting strong controls on the bodies in charge of generation - which would usually be the government anyway.
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Aug 9, 2022 09:47
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I kind of like the idea of a setup where my own solar panels energy is stored in the car battery for later use as any arguments about inefficiency and any energy loss in transfer is moot. The problem is that the prime time for solar capture is the middle of the day when your car is probably sitting outside your work or leisure destination not your house. So either I need to harvest my work place energy to take home with me or just have a big house battery instead.
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Aug 9, 2022 09:51
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Overhead wires where a network of buildings with solar panels and EVs with batteries and pantographs power each other.
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Aug 9, 2022 09:55
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Z the IVth posted:So the anti-nuclear green lobby just patsies of Big Oil? I dont know if you meant this ironically but yeah Big Oil has definitely invested $$$ in promoting this tendency, which was an easy sell to the post-CND environmental movement
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Aug 9, 2022 09:58
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Jedit posted:No, they're just neoliberal Luddite morons. They do have legitimate concerns about the handling of nuclear waste, but those are averted by putting strong controls on the bodies in charge of generation - which would usually be the government anyway. They don't even have that. Nuclear waste is blown massively out of proportion to it's dangers. https://twitter.com/MadiHilly/status/1550148385931513856
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Aug 9, 2022 10:01
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Z the IVth posted:So the anti-nuclear green lobby just patsies of Big Oil? Maybe according to Forbes (not sure if that's a good source). Anti-nuclear campaigning obviously benefits oil and gas massively, and considering the type of people in those industries, you can be sure they've spent a lot of money to turn public opinion against nuclear in the interests of profit.
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Aug 9, 2022 10:04
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Failed Imagineer posted:I dont know if you meant this ironically but yeah Big Oil has definitely invested $$$ in promoting this tendency, which was an easy sell to the post-CND environmental movement I remember as a child hearing lots about nuclear = bad and these days I learn nuclear is cool and good actually. Also Simcity 2000.
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Aug 9, 2022 10:05
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Z the IVth posted:I remember as a child hearing lots about nuclear = bad and these days I learn nuclear is cool and good actually. I blame The Simpsons for popularising anti-Nuclear rhetoric
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Aug 9, 2022 10:24
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Danger - Octopus! posted:I was looking at https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/first-time-mortgage/ to get my head round all the stuff I need to think about and ultimately do - but was wondering if there were any other recs for good sites to start with advice/guidance for a first time buyer who has zero clue how to go from having enough for a deposit to actually buying somewhere? First off, since you're in the UK, get a freehold (or share of freehold). If it's a leasehold only with no freehold and no share of freehold, don't buy it. Zoopla (at least) has a "free text" type of box to filter things where you can type "freehold" to see only those properties that mention that:  By the way, adding that search term narrows the results down from 1769 to... 66.  There's still plenty of supply but, yeah, freeholds are a bit more rare.Another thing is, mortgages are the cheap, so when taking a mortgage it can be a good idea to get a bit more than you need. For example, say you have £50k and you're going to buy a property costing £100k. So just get £50k of mortgage right? Well, sure. Or - you could get £60k mortgage, pay £40k in cash, and have ten grand left over. You can then use the leftover to pay for any taxes and solicitor fees and buy any furniture you need and whatnot, and get some pizza and beer at the end of it. Obviously you'll need to pay it all back, with interest, but it's better than paying back credit card debt or whatever since the interest rates on your mortgage are much much lower. On the actual mortgage terms I'm even less of an expert, but I think in this accursed country you'll kinda be forced to do a limited-time special deal with a reasonably low interest rate, say 2% or whatever but only for the first 3 years, reverting to fuckyou% afterwards. I think it's generally assumed that people will do a deal like that, then another similar deal right after when the first one is up, etc. In theory the value of the property should go up a bit (or at least stay the same), and you'll be paying off some of the mortgage as well, so you should be in a better place w.r.t. loan-to-value after a few years, so it's not necessarily that risky I guess. Example, £60k mortgage for a £100k property i.e. 60% loan-to-value, after 3 years maybe it's £55k left and the property now worth £110k in which case it's 50% loan-to-value, meaning less risk for the bank meaning lower interest rate for the next deal. One "funny" thing is that so many tory voters and businesses in this country (and in every country really) have mortgages and other loans that it's in the interests of every power imaginable to try to make sure the interest rates never go up too much. So I wouldn't worry too much about having to suddenly pay 12% or whatever on your mortgage. If that happens, literally the entire world economy will collapse anyway.
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Aug 9, 2022 10:26
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Z the IVth posted:Also Simcity 2000. 
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Aug 9, 2022 10:28
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His Divine Shadow posted:This volatility creates on average much higher electricity prices, as we have now historically observed. Yes, that’s the key. Beware of any one who describes a thing as ‘uneconomical’ without specifying whether they mean _expensive_ or merely _unprofitable_. Iceland is largely powered by geothermal and hydroelectric energy, which have stable supply. Consumer prices are half what they are in the UK, leaving the near-monopoly energy supplier with a paltry 2 digit profit. On a basic ‘spend x Billion, get y gigawatts’ then something like tidal lagoons is clearly way ahead of anything other than nuclear that can be built in the UK. Build a concrete wall and some turbines, get electricity for about a hundred years with maybe 15 people on site. Problem is under capitalism the person paying is not the person who benefits from lower costs. Tidal power would absolutely collapse electricity prices. So anyone who happens to have concerns about shellfish or whatever is suddenly going to get a bunch of national media interviews and anonymous donors to their charity.
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Aug 9, 2022 10:38
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One cool technology is nuclear fusion! But let me stop you there, I didn't mean in that way you probably think. The cool part here is that a part of nuclear fusion research has generated an unforseen use. Namey it's an extremely efficient and cheap way of drilling super deep holes, such as might be used for deep geothermal. https://newatlas.com/energy/quaise-deep-geothermal-millimeter-wave-drill/ Now if that pans out, it can have huge effects, geothermal has none of the intermittancy issues and is basically a CO2 free source of energy, old coal plants and the like can easily be converted. This is why researching stuff like Fusion and what not is never a waste even if Fusion turned out ot be impossible. All the unforseen spinoff technologies will have use, might even be critically important.
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Aug 9, 2022 10:41
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His Divine Shadow posted:One cool technology is nuclear fusion! But let me stop you there, I didn't mean in that way you probably think. Ah, we appeared to have unlocked a meltagun.
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Aug 9, 2022 10:56
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NotJustANumber99 posted:I kind of like the idea of a setup where my own solar panels energy is stored in the car battery for later use as any arguments about inefficiency and any energy loss in transfer is moot. The problem is that the prime time for solar capture is the middle of the day when your car is probably sitting outside your work or leisure destination not your house. I'm pretty much going to be running this setup soon in Australia. Currently have a large solar system and static battery setup on an off grid house. Solar provides about 97% of the house power with generator backup providing the remaining. Idea behind the electric car is that most of the year the house produces a large surplus of power which is effectively free fuel but the car can also function in place of the generator, charged externally if neccessery, to power the house on very cloudy days. Wouldn't be as effective in the UK as we are sunnier but I live in Victoria where the climate is predominantly heating orientated, not hot all year like other area of Australia.
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Aug 9, 2022 10:58
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His Divine Shadow posted:
This is indeed a very cool concept. Wish I was the kind of scientist that could evaluate the solvability of the engineering hurdles at play here
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Aug 9, 2022 11:00
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His Divine Shadow posted:They don't even have that. Nuclear waste is blown massively out of proportion to it's dangers. That is true, in fact we're very keen on nuclear waste in the UK and actually take it on from other places to get rid of at some point/re-use. What this thread doesn't mention is that you usually need hugely expensive kit to recycle it that also takes a long time to build. Then you have to have reactors that take that type of recycled fuel. It doesn't mean it's a bad idea but it isn't going to be a quick idea.
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Aug 9, 2022 11:04
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His Divine Shadow posted:One cool technology is nuclear fusion! But let me stop you there, I didn't mean in that way you probably think. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-60312633 "True" fusion is also getting closer - they are building a prototype reactor north of Didcot. I really hope the current crisis spurs governments past fossil fuels, and into local, renewable stuff.
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Aug 9, 2022 11:08
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Jedit posted:No, they're just neoliberal Luddite morons. They do have legitimate concerns about the handling of nuclear waste, but those are averted by putting strong controls on the bodies in charge of generation - which would usually be the government anyway. The Luddites were right though, the new technology was great for the people who owned it, but for everyone else unemployment rose, conditions for those working in mills were notoriously grim. At a time before trade unionism had even really coalesced as an idea industrial sabotage was a valid response when the government of the day did gently caress all for the unemployed, the role models of the Tories.
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Aug 9, 2022 11:09
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Zalakwe posted:That is true, in fact we're very keen on nuclear waste in the UK and actually take it on from other places to get rid of at some point/re-use. You can use reprocessed fuel in light water reactors too, that's what France does for instance. It's a more cumbersome and expensive process than the ideal of a fast breeder, but doable. The nuclear fuel rods after their first run through a reactor are still basically 98% usable fuel if one reprocessed them. Burying the waste is criminal. Russia has been running several fast breeders for years and are sadly the world experts on that after France gave up on superphenix when it just started working reliably.
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Aug 9, 2022 11:11
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His Divine Shadow posted:You can use reprocessed fuel in light water reactors too, that's what France does for instance. It's a more cumbersome and expensive process than the ideal of a fast breeder, but doable. The nuclear fuel rods after their first run through a reactor are still basically 98% usable fuel if one reprocessed them. Burying the waste is criminal. I thought France did Mox but you sound like you might know better than me!
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Aug 9, 2022 11:12
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If only nuclear waste could be blasted out of a chimney as smoke for the air currents to take, then no one would have to take responsibility or care about it at all.
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Aug 9, 2022 11:12
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Zalakwe posted:I thought France did Mox but you sound like you might know better than me! AFAIK, they make mox fuel with reprocessed fuel: https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/frances-efficiency-in-the-nuclear-fuel-cycle-what-can-oui-learn quote:Used fuel assemblies from various nuclear power plants are transported to La Hague, where they are kept in a storage pool. Components from the spent fuel are then separated and recyclable materials are recovered. At the Melox facility, plutonium is remixed with depleted uranium to produce MOX fuel.
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Aug 9, 2022 11:16
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