Sunday 28 February 2010

Nuclear Bunker Anyone.......


A nuclear bunker and surrounding land in Derbyshire is expected to fetch up to £25,000 in an eBay auction.

The decommissioned cold war bunker, built in 1959 into a field in the Peak District, has attracted hundreds of hits.

The bunker has lighting and a phone line and can be used as living accommodation for short periods.

It is described by the private seller as "a rare opportunity to acquire a valuable piece of Cold War history".

The bunker was built as a master monitoring post by the Royal Observer Corps (ROC), amid the threat of nuclear attack, but decommissioned after the collapse of the former Soviet Union.

It is accessed via a metal hatch and shaft, and a 15ft (4.57m) ladder leads to two rooms - one for a chemical toilet and the other, of 15ft x 7ft 6in (4.57m x 2.28m), for the monitoring equipment.

Two ventilation shafts are built in and much of the original equipment is still in place.

The seller added: "The bunker can continue to be used as limited living accommodation for short periods or adventure holidays.

"ROC posts rarely come on to the market, especially in such well preserved condition."

The auction ends on 7 March.

Prime location - Open plan living - £25k is a snip....Surely...

They'll be selling the machine gun posts on Roseisle beach next !

Happy Bidding Folks,

Mr J

Saturday 27 February 2010

Home Finders - Don't view at the weekend !


Yesterdays Daily Telegraph asks 'Would you spend £15K just to find a home?'

Once upon a time, the only people who used buying agents were celebrities looking for £5m-plus houses... Now, though, even we little people are paying as much as £3,000 upfront for someone to sniff out and secure us the house of our dreams. At which point we have to cough up another 2.5 per cent of the agreed purchase price (£50,000 on a £2m house).

If Christopher Middleton's idea of "we little people" involves buyers of £2m houses, then he seems to be living in some sort of parallel universe, where everyone is on Wayne Rooney's wages.

And with houses currently so scarce, some people are using buying agents to buy properties costing as little as £500,000. This means the agent can walk away with a cheque for £15,000.

Is it worth it? Definitely, says mother of two teenagers Melanie Laidler, who used a buying agency to find the family house in Sussex she was looking for.
“My husband and I knew exactly what we wanted, but the estate agents seemed to take one look at us and decide we couldn’t afford it,” she says.

“After getting nowhere, we went to BDI Homefinders, who helped us buy a place we’d dismissed before because the photos on the particulars had been rather poor, and there weren’t enough bedrooms. Our agent Sam pointed out how easy it would be to add a bedroom, then negotiated us enough of a discount [£1.15m instead of £1.2m] to pay her fees and more.”

A typical story, says seasoned buying agent Saul Empson, of Haringtons. “Most people who come to us have been looking for at least two or three months,” he says. “They’re tired of hearing about other people buying places which they’ve never even got to see.”

Indeed, the golden ticket that buying agents can offer is the one that allows clients in to view a house before it has appeared in the estate agent’s window.

“In October to December last year, more than 70 per cent of houses we acquired for clients never went fully onto the market,” says Jonathan Hopper, managing director of Garrington Homefinders. Other agents report similar levels of off-piste selling.
“We know who’s out there, who’s made a bid, who hasn’t made a bid,” says Peter Mackie of Property Vision, one of the biggest agencies. “We’re all totally embedded in the business.”

Others talk of local knowledge, trade contacts, networks of past clients and even dinner-party and front-doorstep gossip. “I had one of my best tipoffs from the man who delivers my logs,” says Tom Hudson, of specialist rural buying agents Middleton Advisors.

And once you have been whisked through the front door with a metaphorical blanket over your head, the buying agents are keen to clinch you a deal. Though not, it should be said, at any price.

“We know the history of a house, what it has sold for in the past, what comparable houses have sold for recently and whether it has been on the market, and been taken off again,” Empson says.

“In London, we have access to a trade database called Lonres,” says Jo Eccles, of Sourcing Property. “We can access any property’s history, from how much it has been sold for to what work it has had done on it.”

As well as researching the house, the buying agents investigate the area, to find out if a housing estate is liable to spring up on the back doorstep. “The classic mistake is for unwary buyers to go and visit houses in a certain part of Oxfordshire at the weekend,” Empson says. “The planes from RAF Brize Norton don’t fly on a Saturday or Sunday, but it’s a different story in the week.”

**New buyers in Lossiemouth take note - Unfortunately no so much Kinloss at present (Strangely, I do miss the unmistakeable sound of the Nimorod).

Naturally, all buying agencies claim they can save you from making that kind of mistake. So how do you choose between the firms?

The most noticeable difference is the fact that three of them are the buying arms of big estate agencies: Private Property Search (Strutt & Parker), The Buying Solution (Knight Frank) and Prime Purchase (Savills). Does this not represent a conflict of interest?

“Not at all,” says Philip Selway, of The Buying Solution. “We don’t have a privileged position, in terms of Knight Frank telling us about a property but not our rivals.”
“We act for the buyers, and Strutt & Parker act for the sellers,” says Ian Hepburn, of Private Property Search. “There’s a very clear division.”

Even so, Camilla Dell, of buying agency Black Brick, thinks independence is essential. “It’s our unique selling point,” she says. “No one can accuse us of divided loyalties.”

Maybe not, but what people can say is that buying agencies are expensive.
With the odd exception, perhaps, such as London Property Match, run by grandmothers Sarah Snow and Suzanne Emson. They charge only a £587.50 signing-on deposit, plus one per cent of the purchase price.

“They’re these motherly figures who talk total commonsense and cut through all the rubbish from the estate agents,” says Chelsea art dealer James Harvey. “They held our hands the whole way when we bought our house in Battersea.”

So perhaps it is time for the ladies to put their prices up? “Yes, a firm did try to take us over and make us charge two per cent, but we said no,” says Snow, smiling.
“I think one per cent is quite enough, don’t you?”

Good for you ladies !

You will find many estate agents in this area also offer the service, Paul at Moray Property advises they are very happy to act on behalf of a buyer, and have done so successfully quite recently, securing an un-marketed, off-plan new build for a client - Their fees again are a very respectable - £250.00 and 1%.

So if after searching yourself (always to be recommended first) and that ideal property is still eluding you, a buying agent may be the option for you !

Have a good weekend folks & Happy house hunting !

Mr J

Monday 22 February 2010

Estate Agent To Poodle Clipper....


The Office of Fair Trading report into UK estate agency has found that haggling over rates is to be recommended; estate agency laws discourage Tesco-style online competition; competition is weaker than it should be (although it didn't find any examples of local price-fixing); and the majority of buyers and sellers are happy with the service they've received.

One would have thought that agents would be celebrating. Oh no. In response, Peter Bolton King of the National Association of Estate Agents is furious at the OFT for failing to take him and his profession to task; instead, sitting back and allowing every kind of shoddiness. Once again... a massive failure by the OFT.

The last word, however, must go to Trevor Kent, a former NAEA president: "A poodle clipper today can be an estate agent tomorrow," he said.

Actually, Mr Kent, it wouldn't take too much of a double-dip to find that the estate agents of today are actually the poodle clippers of tomorrow.

Friday 5 February 2010

Mr Frog - The Architect...


Not as 'Crazy Frog' as the title suggests. In a new research, scientists have found out that frogs perform the architectural feat of building floating foam nests using a meticulously timed, three-stage construction process.

Tungara frogs, like many frogs species, create foam nests to protect their young as they mature from eggs to tadpoles.

But while these floating meringue-like refuges look delicate, as if they could collapse into the pond they sit upon at any moment, they are in fact remarkably sturdy.

According to Malcolm Kennedy from the University of Glasgow, "These are exposed to full sunlight, high temperatures, all kinds of infections, including parasitic ones, and yet they survive for four days without any damage, until the tadpoles leave."

"And unlike other foams, they do not damage the membranes of eggs and sperm. They are a remarkable biological material," he said.

"But until now, we did not now quite how the frogs used these material and made the foams," he added.

According to a report by BBC News, to find out more, the research team went to Trinidad in the West Indies to train their cameras on amorous pairs of Tungara frogs.

By studying the footage, frame by frame, the researchers found that the small brown amphibians whipped up their nests in several phases.

"In order to begin, the male sits on the back of the female, and puts his legs underneath her legs, to collect a foam-precursor fluid," Professor Kennedy explained.

The male frog then begins to whip this up, mixing in air bubbles by vigorously kicking his legs.

He does this in short bursts, gradually increasing this "mixing" duration each time.

"This overcomes some of the biophysical problems; if he mixes for too long in the beginning, then this would disperse the fluid and it wouldn't make a foam at all," said Professor Kennedy.

In this first phase, this frothy bubble raft contains no eggs. But as the male moves on to stage two of construction, he gradually begins to blend in eggs, provided by the female, who is all the while sitting beneath him. e carefully maneuvers the eggs into the centre of the foam.

"They do this about 200 times. Eventually, they build this 'meringue'," Professor Kennedy said.

Finally, in the "termination stage", the frog starts to slow down. he period between each mixing session gradually increases until finally the nest is complete.

The team believes that understanding this nest building process could help scientists create "bio-foams" for use in medical applications, such as treating injuries at the scenes of accidents.

Or even perhaps building building some new 'alternative' housing in Moray. It's starting to look like Springfield City out there....

I won't 'ribbit on about it though.

Until the next time.

Mr J

Wednesday 3 February 2010

A castle in a haystack.....


A farmer who built a castle hidden behind a stack of straw bales has lost a High Court bid to save it from being demolished.

Robert Fidler, of Salfords, Surrey, built the home - complete with turrets - without planning permission.

He kept it hidden until August 2006 but was ordered to tear it down by Reigate and Banstead Borough Council in 2008.

Mr Fidler appealed on the basis that his house had stood for four years without anyone objecting to it.

When Mr Fidler removed the bales he believed the structure would no longer be subject to planning enforcement because of a legal loophole.

Immunity rule

But in March 2007 the borough council issued an enforcement notice, which was upheld by a Government planning inspector in May 2008.

The inspector ruled that the removal of the straw bales constituted part of the building works and the four-year immunity rule would not apply.

The High Court was asked to decide whether the removal of the straw bales and tarpaulin was, in the eyes of the law, part of the building operation.

Deputy High Court judge Sir Thayne Forbes said: "In my view, the inspector's findings of fact make it abundantly clear that the erection/removal of the straw bales was an integral - indeed an essential - fundamentally related part of the building operations that were intended to deceive the local planning authority and to achieve by deception lawful status for a dwelling built in breach of planning control."

The judge said Mr Fidler had used two grain silos to form two turrets at the corners of his house. There was also "a stain-glass lantern feature" over a central hall, or gallery.

The property includes a kitchen, living room, study, shower room and toilet and separate WC.

On the first floor, there are four bedrooms and another room still being fitted as a bathroom.

"He stated that he knew he had to deceive the council of its existence until a period of four years from substantial completion and occupation had occurred as they would not grant planning permission for its construction.

"I accept that the act of concealment does not in itself provide a legitimate basis for the council to succeed, as hiding something does not take away lawful rights that may accrue due to the passage of time."

He added: "From his own evidence and submissions it was always his intention to remove the bales once he thought that lawfulness had been secured."

After the hearing Mr Fidler's solicitor, Pritpal Singh Swarn, said an appeal was being considered.

He said: "Mr Fidler is obviously disappointed and will almost certainly want to appeal bearing in mind what he stands to lose, which is the house that he has built.

"The judge appears to have left open the big question - when is a building substantially complete?

"It is necessary for the courts to draw the line as to what constitutes a completed development."

"He stated that he knew he had to deceive the council of its existence until a period of four years from substantial completion and occupation had occurred as they would not grant planning permission for its construction.

"I accept that the act of concealment does not in itself provide a legitimate basis for the council to succeed, as hiding something does not take away lawful rights that may accrue due to the passage of time."

He added: "From his own evidence and submissions it was always his intention to remove the bales once he thought that lawfulness had been secured."

After the hearing Mr Fidler's solicitor, Pritpal Singh Swarn, said an appeal was being considered.

He said: "Mr Fidler is obviously disappointed and will almost certainly want to appeal bearing in mind what he stands to lose, which is the house that he has built.

"The judge appears to have left open the big question - when is a building substantially complete?

"It is necessary for the courts to draw the line as to what constitutes a completed development."


Appeal planned

On the south side of the house there is a gravelled forecourt, and to the north and north-western corner a new patio and conservatory.

The judge said: "Mr Fidler made it quite clear that the construction of his house was undertaken in a clandestine fashion, using a shield of straw bales around it and tarpaulins or plastic sheeting over the top in order to hide its presence during construction.

"He stated that he knew he had to deceive the council of its existence until a period of four years from substantial completion and occupation had occurred as they would not grant planning permission for its construction.

"I accept that the act of concealment does not in itself provide a legitimate basis for the council to succeed, as hiding something does not take away lawful rights that may accrue due to the passage of time."

He added: "From his own evidence and submissions it was always his intention to remove the bales once he thought that lawfulness had been secured."

After the hearing Mr Fidler's solicitor, Pritpal Singh Swarn, said an appeal was being considered.

He said: "Mr Fidler is obviously disappointed and will almost certainly want to appeal bearing in mind what he stands to lose, which is the house that he has built.

"The judge appears to have left open the big question - when is a building substantially complete?

"It is necessary for the courts to draw the line as to what constitutes a completed development."

Sounds like there will be a wrestling match going on for some time with this one. However we all know that the only person who can take down Giant Haystacks is Big Daddy..... I should be on TV !

Easy... Easy....

Mr J