Stage one the approach

Up the path: how a house becomes one of ours

Nothing is bought from a photograph. A house gets two walks before this company commits to it, and the first one happens entirely outside, from the gate and the pavement, before anybody has been asked for a key.

What follows is how the work is sequenced. It is not advice on buying a house of your own, and it contains no figures for what anything costs.

The pass from the pavement

The outside of a house is free to look at and tells most of the story. The roof gets read first: whether the ridge still runs straight, whether tiles have slipped at the verge, what state the chimney stack and its flashing are in. Then the gutters, where a dark streak down the brickwork means water has been going somewhere other than the downpipe for a long time, and the pointing, where soft or missing mortar near the ground usually comes with something worse behind it.

After that the frontage. Render that has been patched in a different colour, a bay window sitting on a cracked cill, replacement units with blown seals, a front door that has dropped on its hinges. The street matters too: how neighbours keep their own frontages, whether there is anywhere to put a skip and a van, and how long the walk is to a station or a bus stop at eight in the morning.

The second walk, with a tape in a pocket

The second walk is deliberately at a different hour of the day. A back room that looked usable at midday can be a room nobody will sit in at four in the afternoon, and that is worth knowing before rather than after. The tape comes out on this visit, room by room, long side first, because a floor plan drawn from memory is always generous.

The second walk is also when taps run, windows get opened and shut, and the loft hatch comes down. Everything found on the first walk is checked from the other side of the wall: a stain on the ceiling against the slope of the roof above it, a damp patch in the kitchen against the position of the outside tap.

The paperwork that sits between the two walks

Between the walks, the legal side begins through solicitors in the ordinary way: title, searches, and whatever planning and building-control history exists for work somebody has already done to the house. An extension with no completion certificate is not necessarily a disaster, but it is a different purchase from one that has its paperwork in order, and the difference needs to be known before terms are agreed rather than discovered afterwards.

Freehold or leasehold changes the questions entirely, and so does anything shared — a drive, a side passage, a flat roof over next door's kitchen. This company buys with its own funds and in its own name, which keeps the chain short, and that is the only claim made about it here.

What happens between buying and selling

Work is done in the order the building wants, not the order that photographs best. Water first: the cause of any damp is found and stopped before a wall is skimmed, because decoration over a live leak is a lie that lasts about one winter. Then the roof and the outside envelope, then electrics and heating by people qualified to certify what they have done, then plaster, then floors, and the kitchen and bathroom last so they are not walked through by every other trade.

No timetable is promised on this site, because a house that has been opened up sometimes answers back. When a room is finished it is finished; until then it is a room with the floor up.

What this company will not do, in plain words

It will not act for anybody else. It does not market other people's houses, arrange tenancies, give advice on a purchase or a sale, recommend a lender, or hold anybody's money. There is no fee to pay anywhere on this site because there is nothing here being sold to you as a service.

If you have a house in Hayes or nearby and want to know whether it is the kind of thing this company buys, the honest answer comes from a walk, and a walk starts with an email to viewings@garibproperty.space. The next stage of the walk — the rooms themselves — is through the front door.