Buying Property? Just rent instead!

If I could ever give anyone advice, who is an immigrant in another country without permanent residence as yet, especially under changing economic environments, it would simply be this. Do not buy property. Especially, in the UK. Let me give you a sample of what I have experienced in the last two years of my supposedly glorious apartment-owning life.

An incorrectly wired boiler (read geyser), meaning that I had to live without hot water for a few days before the problem was resolved, and yes it was winter.

An incorrectly wired bedroom telephone link, corrected ‘courtesy’ of a well known British Telephone company, whose engineer originally suggested that he would sort the problem out as a ‘courtesy’ at no cost, but as it turns out he was expecting me to reciprocate with another courtesy (of the sexual variety) and when I didn’t quite offer the goods, I received the enormous bill, now un-attestable as my two year new-apartment-building insurance time-period has lapsed.

An incorrectly wired electricity meter, charging me the elevated day rate for electricity, which should have cost me the lesser stored heat rate. I spent 6 months enquiring why I didn’t receive any bills and was given various excuses, the main one being an incredibly large backlog. So 18 months later I get charged the over-priced bill which had I received sooner, I would have queried and sorted out the over-priced problem. Now it turns out that the responsibility is with the builder, and for which I had to calculate (without much information) what figure I should be receiving as a refund, myself! This matter is still not resolved two years later.

The management company that is handling the complex, returned some accounts a good few months too late and were in the process of being kicked off the companies register!! They are also so incompetent that they double paid an insurance premium and sent us the bill in advance! These are just a few things I care to point out on their incompetence.

To make matters more hilarious, two residents (roughly 10 years younger than me!), decided to insert themselves as new directors and appointed a new management company without any formal approval (which is illegal) and managed to get this new management company to negotiate a refund from the overpaid insurance, which they actually received (!!) before the management company was even officially elected.

And here I am, trying to sell the place in the current declining house-price market.

Sunny weather for me any day...