Homes in former hospitals and infirmaries – in pictures

From a former workhouse in Buckinghamshire to a converted Grade II-listed redbrick hospital

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Ten key questions to ask an agent when looking for a home to rent Nottingham Estate Agents

It’s important to ask your estate or letting agent the right questions when you search for a property to rent. “Competition can be fierce and time tight in the rental sector, so it is crucial to have your finances in order and be able to move quickly,” says Kate Eales, Head of National Lettings at […]

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A guide to buying land: 10 top tips Nottingham Estate Agents

Buying land can be far more romantic than buying bricks and mortar. You feel as if you are acquiring your very own share, however small, of Planet Earth. And although there are a few pitfalls, purchasing land is generally simpler than purchasing property. It can also, potentially, be just as lucrative. If you’re a first […]

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Country diary: a young wood pigeon learns a life lesson

Sandy, Bedfordshire: The hapless bird was one step away from being as dead as a dodo. It was time to teach it to be more wary

When the chorus stopped, one voice kept going. On and on, through the dog days of summer and into autumn, it sang with monotonous intent. It was still singing that morning. The breeding season was over, but nobody had told the wood pigeons to stop.

Proof of their enduring fecundity was perched on the back of a garden chair. A messy fledgling wore its adolescence in sprigs of pin feathers sprouting out of its head, shoulders, breast and flanks as if it had come out of the nest via a tumble dryer. This young wood pigeon bore a striking in-your-face family resemblance, not so much to its parents as to a distant cousin that shared its big, hook-tipped beak, a horny upper mandible swollen over its nostrils. Perched three metres away, staring at us without any apparent fear or desire for flight, here was a 21st-century dodo.

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Ikea to buy back unwanted furniture for up to half original price

Chain to launch scheme in UK and Ireland on Black Friday reselling secondhand products

Ikea is to buy back its unwanted furniture from customers to resell as secondhand as part of the Swedish group’s efforts to become more environmentally friendly.

The Buy Back initiative will be launched in Ikea stores across the UK and Ireland on 27 November – the Black Friday discount day. Customers will receive vouchers to spend in store, with their value calculated according to the condition of the items returned.

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Kirstie Allsopp and Phil Spencer: how we made Location, Location, Location

‘I was telling two girls how safe an area was – when a policeman came up and said there’d been a murder round the corner’

There used to be a design and property magazine in the Guardian called Space. It ran an article about me and my husband’s property search business. Channel 4 was looking to make a property show; they saw the piece and got in touch. I did a screen test, as did Phil [also a property searcher]. We imagined we were going to be experts talking about property searches on a new show. Little did we know we were being groomed as hosts.

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Should we use an inheritance to buy a shared-ownership property?

We wonder if by doing so we will be able to sell easily if we decide to move in a few years

Q We may be coming into a little bit of money from a small inheritance. We currently rent and are happy where we are. But if we used the inheritance we could afford to buy 25% of a shared-ownership property in the area we live. Are shared-ownership properties worth it? And would we be able to sell easily if we wanted to move elsewhere in, say, five years’ time as work might take us elsewhere?

Or should we hang fire and save up more for a few years and just try to get an outright mortgage on a normal property? In the area we live that could take a long time.
TR

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