On 21 Nov 2005 00:51:46 -0800, wrote:

I moved into my flat 4 years ago after buying it cheap because it
needed renovating.
I got a lot of the work done on the cheap (or by people who told me
they could do the job cheaper than the next guy, so I trusted them).

There's your first mistake, right there.


Total cost to date about £25k
A lot of jobs were never really done right and some things are starting
to show their age and need redoing ie. upvc windows are draughty, combi
boiler not really powerful enough, not enough radiators in flat so a
few cold areas, wood floor starting to lift especially in bathroom and
basic decorating, etc, etc...

Did you pay them, or did you bring them back to fix the issues?


The question is should I keep spending money I can't really afford on a
seemingly never-ending list of repairs and maintenance or should I cut
my losses & move.

That depends on whether the cost of getting the work done properly
exceeds the loss relative to the expected selling price and how
quickly you want to move.


Is this just the price of home ownership, always paying out on
maintenance?

Generally, yes. The question is to decide on what needs to be done,
when and how. Some of the work listed above you could have
probably done yourself and saved a fair bit of money.

The heating and windows issues are the most expensive to fix. Perhaps
the sensible thing would be to wait to sell until next spring when
nobody will notice.


I've never really felt happy in this flat and if I sold I would make a
small profit but not enough to allow me to buy a flat of equivalent
size in another area of the city so I would have to start further down
the ladder.

Anyone else been in a similar situation? What did you do?
Thanks for any advice!

Of renovating old property, yes. I had major work done by a builder
and installed heating, new wiring and decorated myself.


--

..andy