Survivalist Chronicles

So many house owners and builders are struggling to sell their properties this year. The marketplace has almost dried up and mortgage providers are closing their doors to lending money. It is no wonder many marketplace vendors are raising their game in this tricky economic climate.

According to the article “Succumbing to the SWEET temptations of buying a home”, new exciting incentive schemes are being introduced to attract what few customers there are out there, to their doors. Competitions, no council tax and mortgage payments for a year and cash are being offered to encourage the house buyer to purchase with them instead of elsewhere. Watch out though, it seems the competition between vendors could get crazier still!

But whom do they talk to when they decide what to offer as a ‘great’ incentive? Who’s telling the property developers the way to get my money is to offer me free carpets and removals, that’s what I want to know? Give us girls a laundry service for a while or some pampering treatment at a lovely spa … this would show real imagination and consideration. Help with the laundry, now there would be an incentive!

What a nightmare! Burglaries are on the up! But it gets worse it seems! Not only are we at a loss when our belongings get stolen but if the landlord’s belongings get stolen too, it is us who will probably end up having to foot the bill according to the article “Fighting the wave of credit crunch crime!”.

Clever people step forward and listen up! Insurance is the ‘get out of difficult position’ card and us the tenants are advised to go one step further and purchase added protection in the form of specialised ‘tenants insurance’.

There is nothing worse than counting the days before leaving a property in perfect condition and getting your hands on that lovely deposit. It is a classic, the old red wine spill on the carpet. It is almost impossible to remove and you will lose friends over it! Not only will you try so hard to avoid spilling red wine on your landlord’s carpet, you will stop buying red wine altogether and ban people from bringing red wine round altogether. You will develop a red wine obsession and search people’s bags for traces of the stuff before you allow them entry to your apartment. Life is too short so do yourself and your nerves a favour – get some insurance!

During this, one of our worst winters for a long time, many of us have found ourselves suffering with no end of nightmares and catastrophe. You wake up in the morning and find it is more often than not a case of what lies in wait for me today and a feeling of dread!

According to the article “How to weather those wintry hazards” we are now discovering our insurance protection may not protect us as much as we once thought!

We skid into a passing car on icy roads to find our car insurance hasn’t covered us because they have deemed our trip out not a necessity. You return from a long spell away and find that your pipes have burst in your holiday home and your insurance will not cover the damage. You hadn’t realised that your insurance only covered you for periods of absence no longer than thirty days!

How can we reassure ourselves that our insurance policies are covering what we are buying into them for? Here’s a clue, why not take it out of the drawer and read it.

It is now confirmed, if you are a female medical professional, landlords will be falling over themselves to have you move into their property and become their tenant. They don’t like celebrities so much (or so it would seem!) but those amongst us who are medically trained, female, aged between 36 and 45 (what a small window of opportunity that is!) and earning a modest sum of between £20,000 and £30,000 a year are in huge demand! Landlords will be fighting each other to win your custom!

According to the article “Everybody wants a doctor in the house” landlords would much rather a doctor became their tenant than a celebrity or a high earner! If it came to a choice between a doctor and Daniel Craig, the new dishy 007 will have to look for digs elsewhere! Hard to believe but that’s what landlords are claiming their preferences to be! I know whom I would prefer!