They Don't Make Them Like They Used To

Most cultures have this feeling, particularly among the elderly. If anything, Americans tend to reject it more than most cultures.
Often older things are over-engineered, which causes them to last longer and endure hard usage. A business that has been producing an item for awhile starts to find ways to either reduce cost, or improve some other important attribute (such as reducing weight), often at the cost of reducing durability for the end user.

Once a product has been around long enough, multiple businesses compete in a race to the bottom to produce the cheapest product that will hold together long enough to leave the shop. This applies to everything from microwaves to things as mundane as shoes. (Shoes made with older technology cost more, but they also tend to last longer).

They Just Don’t Build Them Like They Used To

I really don’t like the statement.

As a Realtor, I hear it all the time.  When out with clients looking at homes, eventually someone will see a cracking drywall seam, frayed piece of vinyl or fogged window, sigh wistfully, and say ‘you know … they just don’t build ’em like they used to.’
In reality, the statement is a correct one, but not for the reasons most think.

Everything is Different Today … And Will Be Tomorrow, Too

I finally own my first house – so why do I have buyer’s remorse?

Here is a great, but poignant, story by Stuart Heritage.....thank you very much!

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Much has been written about “generation rent” and its myriad ills: the ballooning house prices, the unscrupulous landlords with their dingy buy-to-let empires, the fat wedge of millennials who can’t plan a future because they’re financially trapped in a basement flatshare with a ketamine-addled porn fanatic they met on Gumtree. This is a real problem, and it affects millions of lives.

I know this because I’ve always been a member of generation rent. For years, I’ve poured the bulk of my wages into the pockets of a succession of landlords slapdash enough to fit cupboards that fall off walls, or oven doors that spontaneously shatter of their own accord, or carpets that inexplicably become attractive to slugs at night. And it was miserable.

But this all changed last week. On Thursday afternoon I bought my first house. Admittedly, as it’s 2016, it’s a too-small house with a weird layout next to a graveyard 60 miles from London, the city I was priced out of two years ago. But it’s a house nonetheless; a house paid for in compromise and sacrifice and a deposit that took years to scrape together.

Now, bear in mind that this has only just happened, so there’s a fairly good chance that I still haven’t properly processed all the intricacies of home ownership, but so far my main take on buying a house is that it’s horrible and I hate it and I wish I was still renting.

My buyer’s remorse is overwhelming. You know how many times I saw this bloody house before I bought it? Once. I went to an open-house day, spent 10 minutes craning my neck to see past the dozens of other people filling the living room, and made an offer. Ten minutes. I’ve taken longer than that deciding whether or not to buy cake. I once bookmarked a pair of trousers on Asos and spent a full week umming and ahhing about whether to get them. But no. Ten minutes. It took 10 minutes to decide that this house was good enough to make me want to spend the rest of my life in debt to a bank.

First-time buyers must wait seven years longer for home in south-east England

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What in God’s name was I thinking? I bought it because I’m 36 years old – two years older than the average first-time buyer in London, almost a decade older than the average in Carlisle – and I wanted to pay off my mortgage before I retire, rather than using a pension that I won’t actually have. It isn’t even my house. It belongs to a bank, and I’m going to spend the next three decades buying it back from them half a per cent at a time.

My first thought on looking around the new house and noticing all its weird flaws for the first time wasn’t a happy feeling of security. It was a realisation that I’m one of those “your home is at risk” people now. I’m one of those people who gets yelled at by the panicky man at the end of radio adverts. And, let’s not kid ourselves here, my home is definitely at risk. I’m a freelance journalist in the year 2016, so, realistically, I only have four months left before work dries up and I’m replaced by a Facebook Live video of a toddler balancing on a log. 

The buck stops with me now. One of the little-discussed benefits of renting a house is that nothing is really your fault. If the oven explodes or the fridge goes kaput or sludge starts seeping out of the plugholes, you just call your landlord and someone will come and fix it for free. Now, though, that’s on me. Which means that my family is going to have to get used to showering up to its ankles in pubey grot.

And there’s a fishpond, too. An entire fishpond that I didn’t clock during my sole cursory glance about the place, that seems to have been put there specifically to endanger my child. I mean, Jesus Christ. I’m an idiot. That’s the only explanation for this.

On the one hand, this does feel as if I’ve finally made it to the last stage of responsible adulthood, now that I’ve got a wife and a kid and a house. But on the other hand, that’s it. All I have to look forward to for the rest of my life is decades of impossible debt, and the distant hope that there won’t be a property crash 30 years from now that will stop me from treating the value of my house as something I can use to buy food.

Worst of all, buying a house makes me feel like a traitor. It feels as though I’ve let down all my generation-rent friends, as if someone drew a line in the sand and I deliberately chose the side of Kirstie Allsop. I feel as if I have become part of the 1%, and I should ride about inside my boxy, broken-down new home on a pony like the shrieking Fauntleroy I apparently am.

Getting to this point was ridiculous. House prices increased much faster than my ability to sensibly save for a deposit. Getting it together was like trying to chase a moving train. But now I have caught up with it, and jumped on board, and discovered that all the other passengers are nitwits. This cannot possibly end well.

Source:- https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/26/i-finally-own-my-first-house-so-why-do-i-have-buyers-remorse

English House Names

Find out about the different type of houses we have in England

Photos of different types of houses

Why do we give our houses names?

House naming started many years ago with rich people naming their homes. The rich named their Halls, Houses, Manors, Castles, and Lodges according to ancestry, location, and family titles: Norfolk House (Duke of), Belvoir Castle (overlooking the Belvoir Valley); Castle Droge (named after a 13th ancestor) etc. Gradually over the years other people began to give names to their homes too.

All houses in towns and cities have a number. Very few have just a name and majority do not have names.

Street Numbering

Street numbering was introduced by act of Parliament in 1765. Every house in a town and city has a number followed by the name of the road it is in e.g. 26 Avebury Avenue. The first house in the road is number one and the last house is the number of buildings in the street. The number readily identifies the location of a property in a road and so makes it easier for the emergency services to find houses quickly.

Odd numbers are usually assigned to the left side of the street and even numbers to the right, as they head out of town.

The UK's Top 50 house names
from the Halifax House Names Survey 2003

1. The Cottage	18. Orchard Cottage	35. Fairview
2. Rose Cottage	19. Yew Tree Cottage	36. White Cottage
3. The Bungalow	20. The Laurels	37. Mill House
4. The Coach House	21. The Old Post Office	38 The Orchard
5. Orchard House	22. The Gables	39. Treetops
6. The Lodge	23. The Hollies	40. Primrose Cottage
7. Woodlands	24. The Beeches	41. The Granary
8. The Old School House	25. The Firs	42. The Nook
9. Ivy Cottage	26. Woodside	43. Corner Cottage
10. The Willows	27. Meadow View	44. School House
11. The Barn	28. The Stables	45. Greenacres
12. The Old Rectory	29. The White House	46. The Old School
13. Hillside	30. Holly Cottage	47. Honeysuckle Cottage
14. Hillcrest	31. Willow Cottage	48. Lilac Cottage
15. The Croft	32. Highfield	49. Wayside
16. The Old Vicarage	33. The Haven	50. Oaklands
17. Sunnyside	34. Springfield

The most Common Themes for House names in Britain

House names today are inspired by a bewildering array of sources: everything from location and local history to literature and legends.

Animals and birds

Favourites include:

Badgers Cottage, Cuckoo Cottage, Curlew Cottage, Dolphin Cottage, Fox Hollow, Kestrels, Magpies, Mole End, Nightingale Cottage, Robin Hill, Rookery Nook, Squirrels Leap, Swallow Barn, The Jays and Two Hoots

Trees

Favourites include:

Orchard House, The Orchard, Woodlands, Treetops, Oaklands, The Willows, Yew Tree Cottage, The Laurels, The Hollies, The Beeches and The Firs.

Plants and flowers

Favourites include:

Rose Cottage, Primrose Cottage, Honeysuckle Cottage and Lilac Cottage.

Locations and views

Favourites include:

Hillside, Hillcrest, Sunnyside, Woodside, Meadow View and Fairview.

Historical

Favourites include:

The Coach House, The Old School House, The Old Rectory, The Old Vicarage, The Old Post Office, Mill House, The Granary and The Grange

Fairytales and Old Favourites

Favourites include:

Thimble Cottage, Pippins, The Little House, The Nutshell, Whispers, Wishing Well Cottage and The Nest.

Holidays and beauty spots

Favourites include:

Ambleside, Blencathra, Eskdale, Rydal, Tarn Hows, Windermere, Larmona, Tresco and Kynance.

Source:- http://resources.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/customs/questions/housenames.htm

Entire British Village

Entire British village where time has stood still for 50 years goes up for sale - to the KINDEST bidder

© Provided by Mirror

An entire village is going under the hammer to the ‘kindest’ bidder.

When Eve Dawnay died five years ago, she left the perfectly preserved North Yorkshire village of West Heslerton to her family.

It came complete with a 21-bedroom historic hall, 42 houses, a pub and restaurant, a garage, a sports pavilion and playing fields and more than 2,000 acres of surrounding countryside.

Now the estate village near Malton is up for sale for £20million and her family is hoping to find a wealthy buyer who shares their wish to conserve the unique way of life.

The endearingly eccentric Oxford-educated spinster owned the whole village and, thanks to affordable rents and some clever social engineering, she ensured that it retained a vibrant community supporting a host of amenities, including a primary school and its own football, cricket and bowling teams.

“Miss Dawnay was a wonderful lady,” says Tom Watson, a director of Cundalls estate agency, which is handling the sale.

“She was very kind and the property rents are, and have always been, very low.

"This has helped keep a village community with a mixed group of ages and there are obviously a lot of people hoping that somebody with a similar benevolent nature will come along to take over the estate.

“It would be perfect for somebody wanting to build up and leave a legacy.

"The estate has been very much untouched in the past 50 years and is now a blank canvas ready to be shaped for the next generation.”

© Provided by Mirror

He expects a huge amount of interest from developers and investors keen to exploit the opportunities on offer.

“In many respects time has stood still in West Heslerton.

"There are now endless possibilities to convert buildings, develop plots and explore commercial opportunities,” Watson added.

© Provided by Mirror

“But I know that in an ideal world Miss Dawnay’s family would really like to see the estate carry on in a similar vein.”

The village has been owned by the Dawnay family for 150 years, after Eve Dawnay inherited it in 1964 on the death of her father.

She graduated from Oxford University with a BA in French in 1948 and worked in Paris and London before returning to Yorkshire.

As well as excelling academically, she was also a skilled craftswoman and made a collection of model rooms featuring miniature historical scenes.

© Provided by Mirror

When she died in December 2010, aged 84, there was no single heir and so the only realistic option for the beneficiaries was to sell.

Her younger sister Verena Elliott, who now lives in London, says: “It’s not the prettiest of villages.

"It wouldn’t go on the front of a chocolate box but my great grandfather, grandfather and father loved it.

“We all loved it and it would be very hard to find a village with more loyal and lovely people living in it. There is a real sense of community, which is hard to find these days.

“There are generations of families who have lived in the estate houses. In fact, there was a time when nobody ever seemed to move away.

“I can’t say strongly enough what the village and the people who have lived there meant to my family.

“The loyalty of those villagers has been tremendous. It will be strange to return and not be able to just wander around like I always have; that it will belong to somebody else.

"But times have changed, especially when it comes to farming, and it will be lovely to see new life breathed into the estate.”

© Provided by Mirror

At the centre of the estate is the 21-bedroom West Heslerton Hall.

It hasn’t been lived in for 30 years after Miss Dawnay moved to a smaller, purpose-built property.

© Provided by Mirror

The hall now offers the potential to be modernised or converted.

© Provided by Mirror

In addition to the hall, the sale includes Miss Dawnay’s four-bedroom home, 42 houses and cottages, a pub/restaurant, filling station/garage and a playing field and sports field with pavilion.

© Provided by Mirror

There are 2,116 acres of agricultural land, including 112 acres of woodland.

Source:- http://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/homeandproperty/entire-british-village-where-time-has-stood-still-for-50-years-goes-up-for-sale-to-the-kindest-bidder/ar-BBrj2ZB?li=BBoPOOl&ocid=ansmsnnews11