The nervous wait to exchange....

[dowie]

Should I go down the bank loan route and take the hit on the LISA
Or get a small 5 year Mortgage and maximise the LISA?

Well why not just work out how much each costs? You know how quickly you're planning to pay off the 10k, what rates you've got for loans, what mortgages you can get and how much the arrangement fees will be.

So why not just work it out? I don't recall arranging a mortgage to be particularly painful, sure I don't doubt that an unsecured loan is much quicker to arrange but meh... if there is a significant enough saving to be had from a mortgage then why not...

 

[Xink37]

As a FTB and from the limited knowledge I now have . I guess with both options I still need to pay legal fees for conveyancing as well as getting a survey done on the house.

With the mortgage route this can potentially take 6 to 8 weeks with a potential product fee of £1k
The loan would be instant, more flexible but I’d potentially lose £2.5k ( you could argue only £500 of this is my own money)

The interest rates of 2 per cent on a mortgage over the term Versus 3.5 per cent on a loan aren’t a big issue for me as this will be minimal.
So I guess the mortgage route is the most cost effective, just a bit more drawn out

 

[Goberpiles316]

So it’s moving day for us, pretty much the end of a long journey for us age 18 one bedroom flat, then two bedroom flat, three bedroom terrace now at 40 years old with two kids into a four bedroom semi, down a private road, with just us and one other property, private parking for at least four cars, garage, hot tub, and the holy grail two bathrooms.

 

[Semple]

As a FTB and from the limited knowledge I now have . I guess with both options I still need to pay legal fees for conveyancing as well as getting a survey done on the house.

With the mortgage route this can potentially take 6 to 8 weeks with a potential product fee of £1k
The loan would be instant, more flexible but I’d potentially lose £2.5k ( you could argue only £500 of this is my own money)

The interest rates of 2 per cent on a mortgage over the term Versus 3.5 per cent on a loan aren’t a big issue for me as this will be minimal.
So I guess the mortgage route is the most cost effective, just a bit more drawn out

Personally with the bonus you get from the LISA, you'd probably be better off getting the smallest possible mortgage you can find. Which may mean not needing to put down the entirety of your 20k deposit.

How does this right to buy discount work? Does that contribute to any deposit you have. The 70% discount already knocks you way into the lowest LTV tier, so in theory you could stump up a fiver and still be in the lowest LTV tier.

Edit: Reading into this a bit more, i think you'll actually struggle to find a mortgage for such a small amount, there's such things as offset mortgages, but i'm not sure how that would work with your deposit.

From everything you seem to have told us... The house has a value of 100k, you're likely to be getting about a 70% discount (70k), you have a 20k deposit saved up, along with an 10K LISA (7.5k cash value). If you withdrew the money from the LISA, you'd only need 2.5k remaining to fully pay off the balance.

How long realistically would it take you to save 2.5k? If we're only talking a couple of months, and your credit rating is good, you could get a 0% credit card and pay that off over time. A loan of such a small amount normally gets stung with higher interest as banks are typically more interested in loaning much higher amounts. The lowest i could find was 13.5% APR.

 

[Kemik]

Grumble grumble grumble... why should anyone be given 70% off the price of a house? Don't think a private landlord would offer that. Only gives the council £30k to build a replacement?

 

[jimjamuk]

So it’s moving day for us, pretty much the end of a long journey for us age 18 one bedroom flat, then two bedroom flat, three bedroom terrace now at 40 years old with two kids into a four bedroom semi, down a private road, with just us and one other property, private parking for at least four cars, garage, hot tub, and the holy grail two bathrooms.

Well done - we are much the same as you - this time we are getting a cottage in the countryside. Cant wait

 

[Xink37]

Personally with the bonus you get from the LISA, you'd probably be better off getting the smallest possible mortgage you can find. Which may mean not needing to put down the entirety of your 20k deposit.

How does this right to buy discount work? Does that contribute to any deposit you have. The 70% discount already knocks you way into the lowest LTV tier, so in theory you could stump up a fiver and still be in the lowest LTV tier.

Edit: Reading into this a bit more, i think you'll actually struggle to find a mortgage for such a small amount, there's such things as offset mortgages, but i'm not sure how that would work with your deposit.

From everything you seem to have told us... The house has a value of 100k, you're likely to be getting about a 70% discount (70k), you have a 20k deposit saved up, along with an 10K LISA (7.5k cash value). If you withdrew the money from the LISA, you'd only need 2.5k remaining to fully pay off the balance.

How long realistically would it take you to save 2.5k? If we're only talking a couple of months, and your credit rating is good, you could get a 0% credit card and pay that off over time. A loan of such a small amount normally gets stung with higher interest as banks are typically more interested in loaning much higher amounts. The lowest i could find was 13.5% APR.

I could pay cash and buy the property outright but I’d be left with little to no savings so that’s why I ideally don’t want to put down more than a £20k deposit.
There are quite a few lenders who are offering online quotes for a 10k mortgage over 5 year so I’ll probably explore this option more as it seems a shame to lose £2,500 for the sake for an extra 6 weeks or so delay

 

[b0rn2sk8]

Mortgages shouldn’t take 6-8 weeks to arrange, the last one I did took 2 from initial appointment to the offer hitting my inbox. That included a physical (not paper) valuation.

You’ll probably be better off arranging the mortgage yourself as there is so little in it for a broker. Spend 2 minutes on money supermarket and you’ll see who are offering competitive rates.

Most high street banks do it all online and over the phone now, you don’t even have to sign anything these days. You’ll want a zero fee product anyway due to the low amount of the loan. The rate will be slightly higher but it’s negligible on a small loan.

 

[Scotteh]

I'm in process of purchasing a house just now, it took 7 days from appointment to getting an offer.

Also the discount wouldn't likely count on the LTV, the purchase price is the only thing that matters whens taking out the mortgage as far as I'm aware (value would only take effect when you remortgage).

 

[HungryHippos]

As a FTB and from the limited knowledge I now have . I guess with both options I still need to pay legal fees for conveyancing as well as getting a survey done on the house.

With the mortgage route this can potentially take 6 to 8 weeks with a potential product fee of £1k
The loan would be instant, more flexible but I’d potentially lose £2.5k ( you could argue only £500 of this is my own money)

The interest rates of 2 per cent on a mortgage over the term Versus 3.5 per cent on a loan aren’t a big issue for me as this will be minimal.
So I guess the mortgage route is the most cost effective, just a bit more drawn out

Surely you can get a mortgage without a product fee? £1k for a tiny mortgage makes no sense at all.

 

[Scotteh]

As part of obtaining a mortgage offer, broker advised not to do anything ultimately that'll result in credit checks. I've noticed as part of BT Broadband when signing up they seem to indicate they'll perform a credit check.

I assume this would be a soft search just to verify identity (so no worse than an insurance quote really), so I assume this wouldn't bother the lender (in this case, Nationwide) as it's not an actual application for credit?

May be a stupid question, but figured I'd be best to ask

 

[jimjamuk]

As part of obtaining a mortgage offer, broker advised not to do anything ultimately that'll result in credit checks. I've noticed as part of BT Broadband when signing up they seem to indicate they'll perform a credit check.

I assume this would be a soft search just to verify identity (so no worse than an insurance quote really), so I assume this wouldn't bother the lender (in this case, Nationwide) as it's not an actual application for credit?

May be a stupid question, but figured I'd be best to ask

Yes I have got a new mobile phone which pretty much does the same thing. I think if you went and got yourself a personal loan they would frown at that but I dont see that a problem as they know you are going to be looking at lots of utility stuff for the new place. You might want to wait until exchange is done before pulling the trigger though

 

[toshj]

Lots of things became apparent during our survey yesterday... getting the written report by the end of the week/Monday of next, but I met the surveyor once he'd finished the job and he talked me through the house.

Beetle rot in the joists supporting the ground floor - some of it looks quite old as it's been painted over in places, but there's bits and pieces of evidence that suggests it's ongoing. The state of the beams means that they would need to be replaced, or partially replaced - they only seem to be affected at the ends of them. The basement, which was knocked through to form one massive basement has had a beam installed, but the surveyor reckons it's a little narrow and might need upgrading should we wish to install an additional beam on the floor above.

The basement also has had concrete footings installed running the entire perimeter of the room, which I was hoping I could chip away at to increase the floor space, but it seems that the entire building would then need underpinning given how shallow the foundations are. Sod that... with our plan to convert the basement into a kitchen-living space I think I'll get a bespoke kitchen or carpenter in to build units to sit above the concrete footings.

Aside from that, lots of old plastering in the bedrooms which will need to be replaced if we update them and the proposed loft conversion will require the roof to be taken off and crane-lifted steel beams to be installed. All fine in theory, but it's a small quiet street with limited parking.

All of this is the sort of stuff the surveyor would expect in a house of this age, but I'd not expected the extent of the TLC work required. Going to be fun.

 

[EGuitarStar]

I'm a mortgage virgin here aka, first time buyer. After having our first home we put an offer on fall through and losing about £2500 in the process we found another (far better home) and put an offer on that which was accepted.

Today we had our bank's valuation report come back and all looks good as expected, we'll have our mortgage offer paper work available tomorrow and we are awaiting our building survey (level 3) report later this week, we are not expecting any surprises.

We've not had any searches come back yet but I wondered how long we should expect till this will all be sorted? The sellers are leaving the country (no chain) so have said they can vacate asap and once this is all been sorted.

Also, is there anything else I should be thinking about or doing that would be helpful in the long run?

 

[b0rn2sk8]

Searches take a few weeks to come through, you should be getting some property information forms from the sellers to go through. Just make sure you ask questions/queries where its relevant and tell your solicitor about things you know about if its missing (e.g. has it has any work done etc.). A decent solicitors should pick up most things but you just have to bear in mind they haven't seen the property so will not be familiar with it.

You'll need to sort out insurance but that only takes a few minutes just before exchange (assuming its a normal house and doesn't have a flat roof etc.).

The time it takes is generally dependent on how quickly you and your solicitors can turn round the paperwork. If you really want you can get it all done and dusted in 4-5 weeks. But that requires 2 sets of efficient solicitors and sellers which is normally outside of your control. If both parties make it known it needs to be done ASAP they can normally deal with it quickly. Likewise if you want to take your time it's pretty easy to build in delay.

 

[HungryHippos]

I am nearing the date of sorting out Exchange/Completion, my seller is unable to provide the original electrical installation document to confirm that it was all installed correctly and by a qualified person.

The house was built around 2012/2013 so it's reasonably new.

I don't personally think the electrics will have any problems or issues, as the house has clearly been standing for the last few years (and in reality even if they had the original doc, there is nothing to say they hadn't modified things more recently).

My solicitor is saying that I can pay for an electrical safety check if I want to, but the sellers have no legal obligation to get one taken out.

Is the lack of this document likely to cause me any problems? Is it worth taking any action here?

The house should still have cover with NHBC for a few years.

 

[Jimbeam3678]

I am nearing the date of sorting out Exchange/Completion, my seller is unable to provide the original electrical installation document to confirm that it was all installed correctly and by a qualified person.

The house was built around 2012/2013 so it's reasonably new.

I don't personally think the electrics will have any problems or issues, as the house has clearly been standing for the last few years (and in reality even if they had the original doc, there is nothing to say they hadn't modified things more recently).

My solicitor is saying that I can pay for an electrical safety check if I want to, but the sellers have no legal obligation to get one taken out.

Is the lack of this document likely to cause me any problems? Is it worth taking any action here?

The house should still have cover with NHBC for a few years.

Exact same thing happened to us when we bought. We just had a new consumer box installed and with that the electrics were tested. Worst case get them tested when you move in if its concerning you, as you say even if they had the documents there is nothing stopping them altering them after.

If you think about it why would the seller pay for them to be tested? They are essentially paying to potentially have to give you money off

 

[HungryHippos]

Exact same thing happened to us when we bought. We just had a new consumer box installed and with that the electrics were tested. Worst case get them tested when you move in if its concerning you, as you say even if they had the documents there is nothing stopping them altering them after.

If you think about it why would the seller pay for them to be tested? They are essentially paying to potentially have to give you money off

From my end I have no concerns personally. My main concerns would be around two surrounding things;

1. Insurance, as I can't prove the electrics have been installed professionally, if the electrics burn the house down am I covered?
2. Selling the house down the line. Without this a buyer may request this and I would be unable to produce the documentation.

I would not expect the seller to stump up for an electrical safety test, but is it worth me getting one done to cover the above scenarios at my own expense?

 

[heeeed]

If you think about it why would the seller pay for them to be tested? They are essentially paying to potentially have to give you money off

I had a mate who was able to do it for me and not cost a lot, but when I asked I was happy to get it done to get things moving swiftly on and didn't consider it a significant cost in the grand scheme of things. Likewise my buyers wanted same from gas safe and again an extra £50 to make things move smoothly I feel is worth it.

Having said that I'm now fed up with our situation as there is an issue with the selling of the house below me in chain around their leasehold and it may take months to essentially renegotiate themselves a new leasehold with their downstairs neighbours. We are therefore putting back on market to try get a new buyer if they cant get it sorted asap, so I guess I have wasted my money if that sale doesn't happen anyway. so bloody stressful when you get calls at work from your tearful wife catastrophising over the whole thing

 

[Russinating]

For those of you who've completed a chain, how long was your period between "your completion date is" and said date?