Skip in from the cold

Homes of our own in north Bolton

Two gloved hands pressing the steel pins of a small grey moisture meter against a smooth, dry plastered wall; the meter's screen is blank.
North Bolton · terraced houses

Put a house forward

Selling a terraced house in the north of Bolton — empty, cold, or needing everything doing? Tell us about it here. Four short steps: where it is, the state of each layer of the house, when, and how to reach you. You get a reference straight away, and you can check where it has got to with that and your email.

Terraces in three wards

Which houses

Terraced houses in Halliwell, Smithills and Astley Bridge: a mid-terrace, an end-terrace, or a back-to-back that was long ago made into one house. It does not need to be in good order. A house that has stood empty, that is cold, or that needs the roof, the damp and the wiring all seeing to is exactly the kind we bring back and keep.

We do not buy flats, new houses or anything outside Bolton, and the form says so as soon as it can, before you spend time on it. Inside Bolton but outside those three wards, it says that plainly too; you can still send the house, though the answer will most likely be that we do not buy there.

The wards are Bolton’s current ones, redrawn in 2023. Crompton, which some older descriptions of these streets still name, is no longer a ward, so the check answers with whichever ward a street sits in today. It asks the public postcode list at postcodes.io, sending only the postcode.

Four short steps

Put it forward

Four short steps. Nothing here commits you to anything, and you get a reference to come back with.

Step one of fourWhere it is

We buy in Halliwell, Smithills and Astley Bridge wards. The postcode is checked against them before you go further.

The ward is checked when you send the form.

Step two of fourThe house

What it is, then the state of each layer as far as you know it. ‘Not sure’ is a good answer: on a visit we look at everything anyway.

What kind of house is it?
Bedrooms
A cellar?
Roof
Walls
Damp
Windows
Heating
Wiring
The house, drawn in section A two-up two-down terraced house with a cellar. Each part colours in as you answer: roof, walls, damp, windows, heating and wiring. Nothing is answered yet.
  • sound, dry, working
  • needs work
  • failed, wet, not working
  • not sure
Each layer colours in as you answer.
Step three of fourWhen
When do you need to move on from it?
Does anyone live there now?
Whose house is it?
Step four of fourYou
How should we reach you first?
After you send it

What happens next

Each house moves through the same seven stages, from arriving here to the day a sale completes, and checking it shows the day it reached each one. A stage moves on only when the thing written beside it has really happened; the site never moves one on its own.

  1. ReceivedStored the moment you send it, under its own reference.Moves on when A person at Ilan Nest opens it and reads it, within two working days of it arriving.
  2. ReadA person reads what you sent and writes to you from homes@ilannest.space, with any questions. Nothing is decided from the form alone.Moves on when A visit is arranged with you. If it is plainly not a house we would buy, we write to say so, and why, and it ends here.
  3. A visitWe look at the house with you, and with whoever lives there: the roof line, the walls inside and out, the cellar, the yard drain, the wiring and the gas.Moves on when The visit has taken place.
  4. A written answerWhether we would like to buy the house, and why, written after the visit. If we would, the answer is our offer, made subject to contract.Moves on when You tell us you accept and which solicitor or conveyancer acts for you. If you decline, or our answer is no, it ends here.
  5. Agreed, subject to contractEach side instructs its own solicitor. Ours checks the title, the searches and the house’s papers. Either side can still step back; nothing binds anyone yet.Moves on when Both solicitors exchange signed contracts.
  6. Contracts exchangedFrom this moment both sides are bound, and the completion day written into the contract is fixed.Moves on when Completion day comes and the sale completes.
  7. CompletedThe house passes to Ilan Nest, and the work of bringing it back begins.
Reference and email

Check a house you sent

Give the reference and the email you sent it from. You will see the stage it has reached and everything you sent, and you can change the timing, add a note, or withdraw it — which deletes it.

And how to delete it

What is kept

Everything you send is stored with its reference for twelve months from the last change, then deleted automatically. Withdrawing it deletes it at once. It is used for one thing: reading the house and answering you. Nobody else is given it; it is held by Cloudflare, which runs this site.

To find the ward, the postcode alone goes to the public postcode list. To slow down automated sending, Cloudflare counts sends from each network address for a minute, by a scrambled form of the address; nothing about it is stored. The form also carries a signed note of when it was opened, so it is only taken between a few seconds and two hours later. This page sets no cookies. Every item kept, its lawful basis and your rights are in Your information; what binds whom, and when, is in the terms of our offers.