first time buyer help please >.<

Philz0r

Philz0r

Philz0r

Associate
Joined
3 Apr 2011
Posts
1,912
Location
York
ok i think this is about my 3rd thread on the fact ive been looking at houses. and today we got our offer accepted at the best house weve found and also one of the cheapest!.

so now im at a blank and have no idea what the hell im suppost to be doing. i've got an appointment booked with mortgage advisor tomorrow but other then that i dunno what i should be doing.

will the advisor help me with silicitors and surveyors or do i need to solo that, also ive been looking into a 5yr fixed rate mortgage and the advisor on my first meeting strongly disagreed going 5yrs.

what would you do?

im excited and worried all in one :S


Phil.
 
Your lender will help you through the vast majority of it. See more than one and try to get advice from an independant (you can get free advice from the moneysavingsexpert webby).

Regarding solicitors I would say try to get a local one. I took the one advised by my lender and it wasn't local, it meant a lot of messing around sending documents by secure courier, etc.
 
there is lots of free advice around, although taking the advice of a bank / building society may give you a biased view towards their products. indepedant advice is the way to go.

similarly after the meeting with the advisor, come away and look around sites like moneysupermarket to get quotes on similar mortgages
 
I'm a little confused as to how you can put in an offer for a house without having seen an advisor. Have you got a certificate guaranteeing that the lender can provide funds on your behalf? Without that the estate agents wouldn't proceed with us.
 
Gilly said:
I'm a little confused as to how you can put in an offer for a house without having seen an advisor. Have you got a certificate guaranteeing that the lender can provide funds on your behalf? Without that the estate agents wouldn't proceed with us.
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Depends on the agent, some do tow the line that unless you can prove you have the funds in place, be it cash or mortgage offer, they won't do anything.

They also tend to be the agents who are cretins, all offers on a property must by law I believe be forwarded on to the seller.

A lot of agents play this card to try and get you to go with their own mortgage lenders and other services such as solicitors.

You can put an offer in on whatever you like and the agent has to pass that on, then it's up to the sellers to make an informed decision on whether to accept it as they should ask the question what position are the buyers in.
 
goes along the lines of

1) find house, make offer, have offer accepted

2) apply for mortgage (this can be done in principal before finding the property)

and it is normally wise to see a financial advisor before you find the house so that you know how much you can spend

3) find and appiont a solicitor

after that you will have a survey done on the property by your mortgage company to make sure its worth what they are lending you

you can also take out your own private survey which will look in more detail
 
Ev0 said:
Depends on the agent, some do tow the line that unless you can prove you have the funds in place, be it cash or mortgage offer, they won't do anything.
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I was told by all the agents we used that we'd need an agreement in principle to prove we had funds in place.

We did have a fall-out with one of the mortgage advisors that we spoke to at one of the agents. Basically he believed that because we'd taken some advice from him that we should have used him as our mortgage provider as a middle man to the lender we used, even though he openly admitted that he couldn't match the prices we were getting by going direct.

When he mailed our lass I believe the term he used was 'there's a vicious rumour going around that you're going with X rather than with us'. The response was 'It isn't a rumour, if you had asked you'd have been told, we didn't sign anything with you and you want us to pay nearly double for no benefit by going with you'. I didn't understand his point at all.
 
I recently went through all this and bought my own place. Far less stressful than I'd always been told. In fact, it was a breeze!

Had a local conveyancer recommended by a friend. Best thing is to ring around a few places, preferably recommended and get a price. I'd suggest ensuring you go with someone who offers a fixed rate + expenses. You don't want to be in the position where you're being charged by the hour! Expenses will rack up too, particularly if you're purchasing somewhere with a leasehold.

As far as mortgage application goes, I spoke to a couple of advisors who attempted to match the mortgage I got direct with the building society. None could match it, and all admitted it was a pretty good deal.

Process with the bank was pretty easy too. I went through the entire process in 6 weeks. That's from putting an offer in and speaking to the building society, to completion.

Edit: also, the building society did a valuation survey. I didn't bother with my own survey as it was a fairly new build with no obvious areas of problems. The valuation highlights any major issues anyway. Not necessarily the best route, but no problems for me yet!
 
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Gilly said:
I was told by all the agents we used that we'd need an agreement in principle to prove we had funds in place.

We did have a fall-out with one of the mortgage advisors that we spoke to at one of the agents. Basically he believed that because we'd taken some advice from him that we should have used him as our mortgage provider as a middle man to the lender we used, even though he openly admitted that he couldn't match the prices we were getting by going direct.

When he mailed our lass I believe the term he used was 'there's a vicious rumour going around that you're going with X rather than with us'. The response was 'It isn't a rumour, if you had asked you'd have been told, we didn't sign anything with you and you want us to pay nearly double for no benefit by going with you'. I didn't understand his point at all.
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We had similar when trying to buy a house, they refused to deal with us until we went in to see their in house mortgage broker.

Everything had alraedy be sorted elsewhere as my family are in the business, but they were proper eejits who wouldn't do anything unless we went in to see them.

I was jsut rather short and blunt with the guy, who was actually ok just the company was horrible to deal with.

It's agencies like that which go towards giving the business the poor reputation it has.
 
I've seen barclays mortgage advisor and been mortgage approved. If anyone asked if i can get a mortgage i said barclays approved me and there has been no complications. I now have an appointment with a mortgage advisor not a lender. The advisor is free and gets paid through commision through banks on reccomending us mortgages but thats all it is, reccomendations. Were dropping a 25% deposit and currently looking at ING for a mortgage 4.79% 5 year fixed with no mortgage fee
 
Bought my first place in London in November. Wouldnt advise ever seeing any in house advisors as they will know exactly what you can afford and play it against you, nor would ever use in house solicitors.

In terms of the process from offer to completion, as advised use local solicitors, get updates from the solicitors every couple of days so you know where the bottlenecks are and can chase to get faster results (vendor side for us was rubbish, so we would phone the estate agent to get them to pressure). Before you exchange your solcitor should give you a pack of information (deeds, search findings, correspondence with vendor's side etc). Make sure you look at this and understand what you are buying, dont be afraid to ask questions on anything you are unsure of.

Just before exchange, sterongly recommend you do another viewing just in case of any problems, and also so you can plan completion easier (e.g. you can take measurements that on a viewing they may not let you as you are now buying it etc). On exchange we then ordered all broadband etc so it was ready quickly. Also on exchange date ensure you have insurance in place...


On completion, first thing we done was change all locks, then started tearing up everything up ;)
 
Congrats on finding a place!

Just a bit of advice on mortgage advisors. Don't let them take you for a ride just because you're a first time buyer. The mortgage advisor that was working for the estate agent I got my house through saw I was a first time buyer and told me that I could only have the house at the offer price if I went with them for the mortgage! Knowing this was illegal I told him where to go and made a point of reporting him. God only knows how many people he had scammed with this method. Needless to say he no longer works at that estate agent.

EDIT: To answer your post, the mortgage advisor I went with gave me advice on solicitors and all the other fees related. Make sure the mortgage advisor is completely transparent about what they are doing even up to how much they are getting for setting you up with any products they try sell. They are required to do this by their regulatory organisation.
 
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my adivce. Don't get drawn in to their protection policies. Shop around, you'll find them often cheaper for much of the product range (which includes):

Life insurance
Buidlings insurance
Contents insurance

Don't accept the mortgate quotation until you've looked around. Gain an AIP (Agreement in Principle) and then approach other lenders to secure a better deal. If none see forthcoming, at least you have the AIP from the bank.
 
Make sure you shop around to get a good deal. Sounds a bit like you've just gone straight to the bank and are running with their offer.

Look at the moneymadeclear tables for a rough overview on the rates available.

As for them 'strongly disagreeing' with you going for a 5 year fix, that's nonsense, it's completely up to you what rate to go for. I have gone for a 5 year fix for piece of mind and stability. The reason they'll push you toward a 1,2,3 year deal is so you're be straight back there in a couple of years ready to pay them and dump truck load of fees again ;)
 
just an update. so far we have decided to go with ING 5 year fixed rate at 4.79%. this had no fees but need to pay the £150 valuation. we find out wether we get it or not tomorrow. the mortgage advisor was pretty nice but i see what you mean about the life insurance/building and contents. my sister was saying she pays £20 a month for contents and building yet the person our mortgage advisor recommended wanted £35 a month for the same level of cover.

solicitor wise they said the estate agent solicitor would price match any we could find and the cheapest we've found so far was £675 (seems a lot but the original offer off the estate agent was £800) just waiting to hear back if they will price match or not. if they dont i have no problem running with the person who gave me that quote.

i need to contact the house owner and im gonna ask them what their gonna leave in the house, carpets ect.

also my advisor asked me when i wanted to move in, she was kinda hinting about 5 months time because theres no rush. i said i want to be moved in by the start of july and she was like "hmmm, i spose we could do that if we pushed it" (the house is chain free).
 
Philz0r said:
also my advisor asked me when i wanted to move in, she was kinda hinting about 5 months time because theres no rush. i said i want to be moved in by the start of july and she was like "hmmm, i spose we could do that if we pushed it" (the house is chain free).
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we have been moved in 5 weeks, normally 6 though, without pushing.
 
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