Furthermore: August 2003

August 15, 2003

A Few Thoughts on Moving to Cambridge

First published on my old site (axiomatic.org.uk) on 23 July 2001

Having bought a house in Cambridge, I thought I would offer a few of my experiences of the process to the teeming multitudes, in the hope that they will be useful to at least a few people.

The first thing to say is that I am not the first person to write such a page: if you have not seen it already, please have a look at Tony Robinson’s page where you will find an excellent survey of the estate agents, and especially those that provide an electronic mailing list.

Note 2003-08-15: the page seems to have gone, but the site is still there.

The times being what they are, I feel I have to begin with a disclaimer:

Disclaimer

This page is intended to reflect my personal experience of the house-buying process. Where I have made judgements about estate agencies or other businesses, these are my personal opinions based on my experience. They are not authoritative, and I accept no responsibility for any decision you may base on them. I have no financial or other relationship with any estate agency, other than as a customer. If you believe anything on this page is inaccurate, please contact me through the comments section.

The remainder of this page explains what I was looking for, and what I found. If you are looking for a different kind of property, my advice may well be of little relevance.

What was I looking for?

My initial criteria when buying were to get a 3 bedroom, 2 reception room house, within walking distance of the station, for under �200K, preferably under �180K.

What did I find?

It rapidly became clear to me that what I actually wanted in terms of the available property was a 1930’s semi in the area below Mill Road and above Cherry Hinton Road. I saw some Victorian properties, but they tended to be small, have no parking (let alone a garage), front directly onto the street, and to be expensive - for instance I saw Victorian places off Mill Road going for over �200K. Clearly, Victorian is something people are prepared to pay a premium for, so if you aren’t bothered by which period the house is from, it doesn’t seem worth it. Don’t even get me started on modern houses - they tended to have the dimensions and price of Victorian property, but without the charm.

How long did it take?

I started looking in early January, and I actually saw a house I liked a lot the first weekend I looked. Unfortunately, by the time I had sold my flat in London, it had gone. After that it was March before I found more places I wanted to make an offer for. One went beyond my range in bidding, but the other is the house I’ve now bought. Again, I had to go beyond the asking price to secure it, but the house met all my original criteria.

It doesn’t take a genius to see that Cambridge is currently a strong seller’s market. There is competition amongst buyers, so prices tend to be high, and the market moves quickly.

How did I search?

I got a list of all the estate agents, and rang through it periodically. I also checked the agency websites and rang them when something interesting appeared. Tony Robinson’s page has most of the URLs, the only one I will quote here is Adhoc (now defunct, alas) which has an aggregated view of all the property which you can search by price etc. This seems to be reasonably up to date, but you usually have to go back to the agency pages to get proper details.

The estate agents were all generally polite and helpful and during the period I was looking, the following had at least one property I went to see (emphasis indicates I made an offer for a property from this agency):

• Anglia Residential
  
• Bush and Co
  
• Catlings
  
• Pocock and Shaw
  
• Redmayne, Arnold and Harris
  
• Rooke, Wood and Miller — this is the one I bought
  
• Spicer McColl
  
• The Tucker Partnership
  
• Tylers
  
• William H Brown
  

Of the remainder, Barker Storey Matthews only deals with business property, Bidwells only deal in property over £250K, and FPD Savills showed no interest in us at all - possibly for similar reasons to Bidwells. The major chains were by far the worst group: Bradford and Bingley, Haart, and Your Move never seemed to have anything.

Bradford and Bingley deserve a special dishonourable mention, since they began sending us junk mail for properties in Cambourne (see, What was I Looking For? above), and cold called us (via Bryant Homes) on two occasions to offer similarly useless viewings. I complained to their office, but I never received a response to my complaints.

I think you would do just as well not to bother with these agencies as if they do have anything, it will show up on adhoc anyway.

Anything Else?

Two businesses I can thoroughly recommend are:

• Charcol Online. Their website provides excellent facilities to search for the mortgage you want, and I found their customer service very good.
  
• Burton and Co (Lincoln, 01522 523215), my solicitors, were also very effective and helpful. I should say that Stuart Curtis, who handled my conveyancing, is a personal friend, but I am not receiving anything in return for mentioning the firm here.
  

August 11, 2003

My CV

Here is my CV in a couple of formats.

• html
  
• pdf
  

These were both generated from a single XML source using the excellent XML Resume tool. Some biographical information has been removed from this version, and the email address has been rendered invalid to prevent spam.

The short version is, I'm a software developer and I can work in either Cambridge or London, UK, though I'd prefer the former. I'm currently happily employed, but I like to keep my CV up to date, so I figure if I put it on the web I'll have to make an effort.

August 10, 2003

Economics of UK Redundancy Consultations

Introduction

A recent conversation made me wonder about the cost-benefit analysis of making a large

group of people redundant under UK law. That is, if you want to make more than 20 people redundant from one site, then there has to first be a three month consultation. If it’s fewer than that, then there just have to be individual consultations with the people involved, so typically you only have to pay them for one month more. It seems intuitively clear that if you only


want to get rid of, say, twenty people, it’s going to be cheaper to get rid of nineteen today, and pay the other one for three months, then make them redundant then. But where’s the break-even point?

Analysis

In the simplified analysis that follows, I’ve assumed that the cost of employing

someone for a month is a fixed cost K (that includes salary and other overheads). The cost of making someone redundant is R (including notice, and redundancy payments). Note that this assumes these costs are the same for all people. I’ll show how an uneven distribution affects things later. I’ve ignored all secondary effects, like the cost of the consultation itself, and the interest accrued on the redundancy money not paid out till the 4th month in the "nineteen today" scenario.

N denotes the number of people in the workforce, and x is the number that are to be made redundant.

For those who find symbolic maths painful to look at, the table breaks down like this:

• Month 1 - the consultation begins, so everyone is still paid. vs nineteen
  
  people are made redundant, the company pays them off.


• Month 2 - the consultation ends, x people are made redundant vs, the company
  
  
  is paying for (N-19) people


• Month 3 - the company is paying for (N-x) people, vs the company is paying for
  
  (N-19) people.


• Month 4 - the company is paying for (N-x) people, vs the company lays off the
  
  
  (x-19) people it still has to get rid of.
  

Month	Consultation	Nineteen now, then the rest
1	KN	K(N-19) + 19R
2	K(N-x) + xR	K(N-19)
3	K(N-x)	K(N-19)
4	K(N-x)	K(N-x) + (x-19)R

Consultation cost (C), simplified = K(4N - 3x) + xR

Nineteen upfront cost (U), simplified = K(4N - 57 - x) + xR

Excess cost of consultation = (C-U) = K(57 - 2x). So for consultation to be economic, this cost should be negative, that is, 57 -2x < 0.

Which implies 57 < 2x, or x > 28.


That is, it’s only economic to have a group consultation if you want to get rid of more than 28 people.

But You Assumed Everyone Costs the Same

It’s a fair cop. Okay, so now assume the income distribution is not flat. Does it make a difference in the case when there’s a consultation? No, because everyone is laid off at the same time. It only makes a difference in the case where you get rid of nineteen people upfront. Now, which people will the company choose, other things being equal? The most expensive, right? So that means the K(N-19) term is going to be smaller.

Let’s look at that excess cost of consultation:  (C-U) = (K(4N - 3x) + xR) - (K(N + 3(N - 19) - x) - xR). If we think of xR as the total cost of redundancy, that term will still drop out on both sides, leaving K((4N - x) - (N+ 3(N - 19) - x)). But we said the K(N-19) term would be smaller, so lets just take off another constant S from that side.

What do we get? K(57 + S - 2x), which is negative if 57 + S < 2x.


Which implies x > 28 + S/2. S is positive, so the effect is that more people must be made redundant for it to be economically worthwhile to the company.

So in summary, as long as the company can get rid of the more expensive people first, the number of people made redundant via a group consultation must be higher for it to be economic. In other words, flat income distribution gives the best possible case for a group consultation so 28 is the least possible lower bound to make the consultation economic.

August 9, 2003

Welcome to furthermore

Okay, it’s another goddam personal blog. Still, I need somewhere to put my various reviews, technical bits and bobs, links and other stuff, so if it is of some good to someone then so much the better. Hope it works this time, I want to go to bed soon.