Buying my first house

SMN

SMN

SMN

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Hi all,

I'm about to begin the process of moving out of rented property and into an 'owned' property - and the process is a little daunting, there are so many different terms thrown around sparingly that its a little difficult to follow sometimes.

Could someone confirm that this is roughly the process I need to follow?

1. Get a mortgage approved in principle for 'up to' the price I want to pay, i.e. £325K when the houses i'm looking at are £300K ish.

2. Once approved, go and look at the houses that confirmed my price band and if I like them ...

3. Hire a solicitor. (This is where my understanding gets hazy). The solicitor puts the offer in on the house for me (is that right?) and deals with the contract side of it, and at the same time can do the conveyancing (an audit of the house, to ensure its to a good standard - so the mortgage lender knows its not going to lose its money).

4. The solicitor, providing the conveyancing report is all A-OK, sends this and the property details to the lender, they approve the property, release the money, funds are paid and we exchange contracts and move in (??).

Im about to start contacting solicitors now, so my knowledge of what to expect to happen around the 3rd point is a little hazy - any clarification at all would be greatly appreciated - especially if we have those 'in the know' :)

Cheers,
Sam
 
1) means go to a mortgage company and go through the numbers and they will agree to lend you the money

2) go find a place and put in an offer, once accepted go back to your mortgage company with the details

you put the offer in to the esatage agent

3) hire a solicitor , they will do the rest
 
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You normally put in an offer through the estate agent, after its accepted then the solicitor takes over.
Don't get to attached to houses you find and put in lower offers on a "nothing to lose" mentality.

Expect the solicitors to take longer than you think they should :)
 
Awesome - thanks guys.

We've applied for a mortgage with First Direct as they (on comparison) had the best rates we could find. We should hear back from them within the next day or two apparently.

So the basic gist is, find a house we like - make an offer, if the offer is accepted, then hire a solicitor?
 
Yes pretty much.

Just on the mortgage, not saying you're wrong but I searched and engaged a IFA who found us a mortgage but in the end I found The Chelsea BS the cheapest when you take into consideration the fees, the headline %rate isn't the total cost.

We got 2.39% fixed for 5 years, 1.99% was available for 3 years.
 
Was in the same situation a few months ago, was accepted early November, mortgage was agreed in principle then and granted fully late December. Now we are still waiting for the solicitors to pull finger out butt, house been empty since September no chain, vendor has done everything to help it along but we are still waiting for the conveyancing to be complete a month or so after they had all the docs. They do have a helpful online tracker that hasn't been updated since early December apart from the last update date changing. Hopefully we should get all the paperwork through this week and complete/exchange in a week or so after. I get the feeling that most solicitors seem to work in the same way, i would think in this modern age in should be Days/weeks rather than months for it all to be complete.
 
SMN said:
Awesome - thanks guys.

We've applied for a mortgage with First Direct as they (on comparison) had the best rates we could find. We should hear back from them within the next day or two apparently.

So the basic gist is, find a house we like - make an offer, if the offer is accepted, then hire a solicitor?
Click to expand...

Thanks for the thread it was basically what I was in here looking for, I'm looking to do the same and have just moved to first direct as well :) please update as to how you get on!

Now we are still waiting for the solicitors to pull finger out butt
Click to expand...
yep I'm preparing for this. parents just bought a new house and they had to wait 3 or 4 months for them to do their job once everything had been agreed with all sorts of paperwork problems on their side of the fence.
 
So just an update - applied online for a mortgage with first direct, initially went for a 2 year fixed, with the £1499 fee, which gave us 2 years at 3.59% interest and then after that the SVR (Currently 3.69%).

After getting accepted over the phone after an hour or so discussion (still not approved in principle yet, have to send payslips etc in) i did some more reading, and with the news this morning about employment falling to 7%, and the bank of england basically saying interest wont rise UNTIL its < 7%, i thought locking it at a higher rate i.e. 4.39% was prudent - again First Direct helpfully just changed it for me no bother.

So once the paperwork is OK'd (hopefully no issues) i'll have a mortgage :) In the meantime we are starting house hunting more seriously and will start to do viewing. Oh the stress.
 
Good luck with the search. My only advice is that if the house is an older property, get a full structural survey done, independently. The mortgage company will do their own basic survey but it is only there to see if it is going to fall down. The Home Buyers survey (halfway between a basic survey and full) is pretty pointless so go for the full, it is only a couple of hundred quid more, if that. It will let you know of any potential problems which will nopt be picked up otherwise.
 
maccapacca said:
Yes pretty much.

Just on the mortgage, not saying you're wrong but I searched and engaged a IFA who found us a mortgage but in the end I found The Chelsea BS the cheapest when you take into consideration the fees, the headline %rate isn't the total cost.

We got 2.39% fixed for 5 years, 1.99% was available for 3 years.
Click to expand...

Hi, I am also in the market - What kind of % deposit were you having to put down for that % rate and was this interest only/buy to let or normal repayment one?
 
fartingspartan said:
Hi, I am also in the market - What kind of % deposit were you having to put down for that % rate and was this interest only/buy to let or normal repayment one?
Click to expand...

if it helps I'm also going in for the same set of mortgages and those rates are at a deposit of 10%. if you have a 15% deposit you can drop about 0.10% on average and its repayment, not interest.
 
So got a text from first direct on Wednesday after posting my forms to them on a Friday, saying that my mortgage has basically been pre-approved (aside from some bank account checks as you need a bank account with them also).

Viewed a house Friday night, liked it but it was a bit expensive for our range (right at the top). Offered 300K for a 310K list price, got a call Saturday morning saying that 2 other bidders put the same bid in - we are all first time buyers/very flexible, and so no differentation.

In the end - it boiled down to me only going 5k over and someone else went 7k over the 300k mark, and also - the point i dont get, someone having 100k deposit and me just having 30k. Not sure why a deposit size would matter to the seller, when a mortgage is pre-approved?

Anyway, back to the searching :(
 
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