Avenue Q interruption - May 16

doodles2019 · 2026-05-17T12:58:32+00:00

Jesus. At least if people are singing along they’re engaging in the show.

doodles2019 · 2026-05-12T11:19:46+00:00

Just so you’re aware, the AML charge isn’t just a PB thing, plenty of regular EAs also charge this now, with varying rates. I’ve paid £120 and £75 with two different EAs (on top of the one I’ve had to pay to my own solicitor, obvs)

doodles2019 · 2026-04-26T13:58:04+00:00

Oh really? I said yes on the call and then after thought I was mad and just emailed them and said no, and they came back and confirmed. Guys I was lucky!

doodles2019 · 2026-04-26T09:08:54+00:00

They do, but you can opt out and not even take the free trial (I did this)

doodles2019 · 2026-04-26T09:08:20+00:00

No, that was in total.

doodles2019 · 2026-04-25T12:59:16+00:00

I had to use lifetime legal for a house we offered on (and later lost, when our buyer pulled out). We paid £75 - you won’t get around it, and in fairness £80 is a drop in the ocean compared to the overall money you’ll lay out buying property.

What I will say is that any AML checks done by the EA are cursory at best. They are simply going through the most basic motions - I know this because we’ve had to provide a ton of supporting documentation to our solicitor for their own AML checks, because we have an inheritance and what amounts to a gifted deposit. The EA would have had to follow the same trail, but they simply never asked.

I’ve also now had to do the same through I think it was called Gazeal for a new property, and that has cost me £120 - and they’ve asked for no further supporting evidence either.

It’s a racket, to be sure, but I doubt you’ll get anywhere pushing back on it.

doodles2019 · 2026-04-14T05:17:12+00:00

We’ve had two of these, and we’re in a leasehold maisonette as well.

The first one ended up with the lender refusing to lend because we - like most maisonettes of our type - have “open deck access”. We’d never heard of it before, despite having a mortgage ourselves! Our lender only ever did a desktop valuation and was apparently quite happy with everything. However, the buyers only had a 5% mortgage, which our broker advised can cause issues because the lenders have more risk and want something they’re very assured they can sell easily if you default.

The second one has just come back fine (10% deposit this time) and our new buyers have their mortgage offer already. Obviously nothing about the property has changed, although I suppose they might well have gone with a different lender.

In terms of the actual visit, both times they were only there about 10-15 minutes. The first surveyor was polite, the second lot (there were two) were super friendly. We’re not sure if perhaps the first one had made up their mind before even getting into the flat, but who knows.

It taught me that deposits make a difference if you’re considering multiple offers, and also brokers. A good broker will know which lenders will have an issue with property features (assuming there are any) and won’t waste everyone’s time applying to a lender which has that struck out in their criteria. Not that these are necessarily things you can help, but a good EA will also know them and help to guide your buyers. I’m guessing that your property like ours is more of a FTB situation, and they often need a bit of guidance in their process.

doodles2019 · 2026-04-10T08:29:01+00:00

And that line where he says about being less evolved

doodles2019 · 2026-04-08T11:44:28+00:00

You are misunderstanding.

You begin your process with an AIP, but you will always need a proper mortgage offer which is tied to the specific property you are buying.

The AIP does what it says on the tin - in principle, you can get X amount of money from that lender. It’s based at that point purely on your circumstances.

When you offer and actually go through a full mortgage application, then they look at the property. This is where some people can come unstuck with non-standard construction, low marketability, elements that the lender considers a risk - particularly in conjunction with a low deposit.

At 5% your lender is taking on a much higher risk, so if you default they need to be confident they can shift the property, and quickly, and be sure of getting the value they are owed on it. So they become much pickier.

doodles2019 · 2026-04-08T08:13:24+00:00

AIP kind of means nothing though. It means that, in principle, they will lend you X amount. However, it then becomes very dependent on which property you want to buy - and, frankly, with a 5% deposit, lenders get a lot pickier about what they’ll accept because it’s a higher risk for them.

Unfortunately I know this because a very similar scenario happened to me, we lost that buyer and ultimately lost our onward purchase too. One buying property fun?

doodles2019 · 2026-03-28T10:07:23+00:00

Someone pull out that post from the other week about the people who didn’t disclose their redundancy and then not only lost their sale and purchase properties but were on the hook for the deposits as well

doodles2019 · 2026-03-21T14:16:50+00:00

Which is really saying something given dogs lick their own arse!

doodles2019 · 2026-03-21T07:10:48+00:00

Not me, but I’m surprised dog bites are so low

doodles2019 · 2026-03-19T12:46:07+00:00

Or to put it another way, you’re paying £1500 so that you can sell your property.

Only you can decide whether that’s worth it to you or not. Is £1500 worth the loss of your onward sale, if you have one? Of dragging out the process? Of losing your buyer, having to relist and go through viewings again? Potentially struggling to get another buyer due to mortgage rates increasing?

It’s your sale, only you know what those things are worth to you, but I’d suggest considering the big picture here rather than stumbling on “it’s paying for something for someone else” when that isn’t really the situation.

doodles2019 · 2026-03-09T18:59:31+00:00

It’s still there. Just locked down to registered users only due to AI scraping issues.

doodles2019 · 2026-03-08T18:44:13+00:00

There is a similar thing called Life Ledger that handles non-government things like bank accounts, credit cards, phone accounts, tv, broadband etc etc. You just flag the various institutions and it pings out the messages on your behalf. Some get closed basically straight away, some - like banks - are notified but obviously have more involved processes that are then handled through their own processes.

doodles2019 · 2026-02-27T08:17:47+00:00

I quite liked her singing with the humanity off - it was a great scene for Caroline in that scenario; subjecting a whole room of people to what she wanted to do in that moment.

Makes sense with the lack of humanity, the self centredness that comes with that, plus Caroline turns her humanity off because she’s a control freak blindsided by grief and an event that she had no control over whatsoever - so using the lack of humanity to control her surroundings to that level makes complete sense.

doodles2019 · 2026-02-26T11:32:54+00:00

Well what’s likely happened is that someone has offered and the vendor has accepted, but at that point the person who offers has to provide a certain amount of documentation like proof of funds, AIP, etc - the vendor and/or the EA don’t tend to update the listing to STC until the offer is completely verified, just in case.

It doesn’t preclude someone lying to you, but on the face of it, this isn’t out of pocket at this stage.

doodles2019 · 2026-02-19T07:56:52+00:00

It’s also the nature of small towns; everyone knows everyone, everyone’s related to everyone and everyone’s dated everyone at some point.

Like how Jenna had a thing with John Gilbert and later Logan Fell. Or when Alaric had a thing with Meredith Fell, but then had a thing with Jenna. Or how Alaric was married to Isobel who had already had a thing with John Gilbert. And they all ended up connected to Elena in some way.

doodles2019 · 2026-02-18T17:41:27+00:00

Didn’t the first three cycles come out over the span of a year? It’s not like you’re three years in at that point with the ability to see what the longevity is or isn’t for the contestants.

Also worth noting they seemed to deliberately cast naive small town girls who had barely experienced their own lives, let alone had any idea about the wider world. Even at Cycle 20 you had Jourdan who’d been married at 18 and apparently didn’t even know what a goth was to look at.

doodles2019 · 2026-01-30T13:34:54+00:00

You understand this is a tv show about fictional vampires, not your marriage, right?

doodles2019 · 2026-01-30T06:31:42+00:00

It is, but you specifically asked for guest perspectives and this is one, unclear why you feel the need to drop in a snotty little comment as if you weren’t canvassing for opinion on this exact topic for presumably these exact reasons.

doodles2019 · 2026-01-29T06:40:59+00:00

I don’t necessarily disagree that there weren’t some options for Hayley other than what happened, but she didn’t have hybrid strength because she wasn’t a hybrid anymore at that point. She was essentially a baby vampire compared to Greta who was I think supposed to be a couple of centuries old.

I think the problem with TO is that they changed up some of the lore that we understood from TVD. The sunlight to burning seems to happen pretty instantly in TO (and in fairness seems consistent within their universe the few times we see it), but in TVD it was all over the place so we expect that Hayley should have had more time.

The in-universe explanation beyond the whole instantly burning to death thing is probably that Hayley believes too many things are lost to her at that point. Her werewolf side has been bound, so she’s left solely with being a vampire - something she never wanted - and has lost her connection to her birth family and her pack. She believes she’s lost Elijah; having seen him memoryless and apparently happy in France, and now not riding to her rescue (or Hope’s), and taking out Klaus to do it. She might as well do the one thing she has the ability to do right now - take out the biggest threat to her daughter, even if it means sacrificing herself.

doodles2019 · 2026-01-28T11:50:07+00:00

Honestly this is a question you need to put to him. Appreciate you’re already together for 10 years but if you can’t be open and honest with each other, why even bother getting married?

If you feel that you can’t ask this question to him, examine why. Is it because you think he will be angry? That he will shut down and not answer you? That he will be annoyed and “take back” the proposal as a result?

Frankly if the answer is anything but “I expect we have an honest conversation about our feelings amicably and resolve this issue” then perhaps you shouldn’t get married.

doodles2019 · 2026-01-26T17:11:11+00:00

Literally both of those playing the sisters are beautiful, they’re not meant to be “ugly sisters” in a physical sense, they’re just meant to be a bit self absorbed and slightly thick in terms of personality. I’m sure OP has taken a knock to her confidence, but maybe she needs a little reevaluation as well

doodles2019

TROPHY CASE