Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 60 total)
  • Buying my first house – advice, timescales etc
  • chrishc777
    Free Member

    Finally buying our own place! Completely new thing for me so clueless. Got an agreement with the bank and have booked a first viewing on a place.

    Any tips? How long between putting in an offer and moving in? What are solicitors costs like? All seems a bit confusing.

    What’s with ‘offers over’ and ‘guide price’ etc?

    nickjb
    Free Member

    My main tip is to look at lots of properties. Look at property you don’t want as well ones you do. It’ll really help focus on what you want. When you start saying things like ‘this house would be perfect if it had an extra bedroom’ or ‘if it was in another part of town’ or ‘if it was 20k cheaper’ then you are getting close. When that perfect house crops up you can offer straight away. The good ones and the well priced ones go fast.

    Offers over usually means they’ve got no idea what it’s worth but that is the sort of figure they are expecting. Guide price usually refers to an auction property and they are generally quite a bit lower than the final selling price so ignore those.

    Offer to moving in is usually around 3 months. If there is no chain you can speed things up a little with a good lawyer (oxymoron?) but also it’s a delicate time when everything can fall apart.

    tomd
    Free Member

    We’re in the middle of this also. There is no one answer to your question, but I think folk normally say 6-8 weeks from offer to moving in. Technically it could be done very quickly but that would rely on a vast chain of weasels doing what they’re meant to do as soon as they can and sending it on. It’s a 1 in a 1000000 chance.

    Our purchase is 100% straightforward, no chain and we’re currently at 5 weeks from offer and we have no move in date. It’ll probably be all done in 8 weeks. There haven’t been any delays as such, there’s just a lot of paper going around.

    Moneysupermarket has a section for solictors fees, it’s very easy to get a quote (although you may wish to use a local solictor in the end). The fees are usually quite low but all the charges for searches and stamp duty are added.

    Guide price – the seller wants this amount but may consider a bit less. Offers over – some sort of mad blind auction.

    FuzzyWuzzy
    Full Member

    I’ve only bought one house so far, it took over a year in the end. I had an offer accepted on one place, paid a load of related fees (about a grand) and it fell through in the end (they said they changed their minds about selling but I think they just got a better offer). Second place I put an offer on the people that owned it were moving into a new build, after my offer was accepted they were told their new house build was delayed (was 9 or 10 months in the end…). They reduced the sale price by 10% as an incentive for me to stick with it (it was a buyers market at the time but I’d already spent a load of fees again so just put up with a 120 mile round trip commute to my new job rather than look again).

    So anywhere between 3 weeks and forever basically.

    mahalo
    Full Member

    yeah we put an offer in on one and accepted one on ours mid septemeber. we have both just had surveys done this week! whole palaver drags on and on and is a complete racket for all the fee earners involved! my advice would be not to get your hopes up or over excited until you have signed contracts at least. my mrs was out buying candles & shit weeks ago and is getting quite stressed out by it all now.

    its not our first time tho, but its 10yrs since we bought this one and i can remember how long it all took back then so not letting it get to me this time, although you wouldnt think so from this post! 🙂

    onehundredthidiot
    Full Member

    England or Scotland? Slightly different depending which one (Don’t know about Wales or NI)

    mattrgee
    Free Member

    Looked round 36 houses, made an offer on number 37 in the Feb, finally moved in on August 22nd! We thought we’d be in around June time and everything was going to plan to allow this to happen, but then the vendor told us she couldn’t possibly move until at least September as she hadn’t started looking for a house yet. 😯 Had it not taken 36 houses to find this one, we would have walked away. We were first time buyers I might add, so could sit it out.

    mahalo
    Full Member

    36!?! blimey we viewed about 10 if that! over how big an area were you searching?

    agent007
    Free Member

    ‘Offers Over’ ‘Guide Price’ are all estate agent BS. Basically they mean nothing. Do your research on the local market and offer what you think the place is worth to you. If the vendor likes it then great, if not and/or you can’t reach an agreement then move along and keep looking.

    Don’t feel pressured to raise your offer. We offered £15k less than list for our last place. Our vendor declined our offer, we refused to increase it but asked them to get back to us if they changed their mind. 2 weeks later they got back to us and said it was ours if we were still interested. That £15k saved paid for new kitchen, flooring and decorating throughout.

    Avoid open viewing days like the plague (where the agent opens the property for a morning to potential buyers). You’ll only feel pressured to make a decision. If you can’t view on your own terms then don’t bother.

    8 weeks would be considered a quick sale from offer to completion. Realistically though 12 weeks is more realistic, perhaps a lot longer if in a chain.

    Flaperon
    Full Member

    Echo the advice of “look at loads”. Take hundreds of photos from weird angles and look in all the cupboards / turn on taps / lights etc. When you get home sort them into different folders on Google Drive or similar.

    If you lean on banks / estate agents / solicitors and there’s no reason for stuff to go wrong, you can do stuff quickly. Went from offer accepted to completion on my first place in under three weeks thanks to a very pro-active solicitor and Nationwide knowing their stuff.

    Your DiP is just that, in principle. The formal application is a little more complicated and you’ll a lot of info, and a history of payslips and bonus confirmations if you rely on them for the mortgage.

    mahalo
    Full Member

    why cant folk post their own ad’s on Rightmove!? its the estate agents that rile me. ours did nothing but bang the ad on rightmove. Then we had to reword the ad for them and re-take most of the pictures! we even told them the list price and we conducted all the viewings! they want 1% +VAT.

    slipped up there. only read about Tepilo when it was too late…

    the-muffin-man
    Full Member

    I kind of disagree with the advice of ‘look at loads’. The right house could be the first one you look at. It will just feel right.

    Don’t fall into the trap of viewing loads for the sake of it, and miss the house that was right and you viewed 4 weeks ago.

    And don’t get hung-up on minor issues – every house needs work of some sort. Unless the roof is caving-in of course! 😀

    fourbanger
    Free Member

    I looked at 3 and made and had an offer accepted on the 3rd. Perfect place that they then pulled out of. I was pretty angry for about 6 months, but people are always really going to do what’s right for them and I can’t really blame them.

    Looked at another 5 or so and found a nice one. Survey revealed some work so got 10k off. Survey cost best part of a grand but saved me money.

    nickjb
    Free Member

    I kind of disagree with the advice of ‘look at loads’. The right house could be the first one you look at. It will just feel right.

    Well obviously stop looking once you’ve found the right one. The point of looking at loads is that you know what the right one is as soon as you see it.

    DT78
    Free Member

    Currently in house buying hell. Trying to buy a probate….don’t do this if you want to move fast.

    Apparently average is 3 months. Our first house fell through after 3 months as sellers decided to remove property from market. We found a second and it took 5 months due to chain. I don’t know anyone who has moved in under 3 months

    UrbanHiker
    Free Member

    Prices.
    The price that a house is on offer for is just an arbitrary value. It may sell for more, or less, depending on many factors. Dont get too hung up on it. A house is only worth to you what you think its worth, and what you can afford.

    It’s really worth looking at right move sold prices (only updated every 3months). You can use these to compare to the for sale price. Copy one of the numbers (last one i think) from the web address of the sold page, and paste it into the for sale price of any other house. This will give you the old right move page, with the asking price.

    Also, install Property Bee into firefox. Instant history on asking price, detail changes etc.

    Survey.
    Fee free to get whatever survey you want, feel necessary etc. Read it, but be very careful how you analyse its contents. It will say almost everything is about to fail, break, is dangerous etc. Get someone you trust to help you make sense of it. All houses have problems, some bigger than others. The key is to understand what those problems may mean to you if you buy the house, and how to make the survey work for you in reducing the price.

    Love.
    Don’t fall in love with any house until you have the keys in your hands.

    theotherjonv
    Full Member

    unless you buy a new build where you get to spec it out, every house will need modification, even if that is just decorating. So look past the decor and the colours, they’re irrelevant. Of course, a tidy house with the smell of fresh coffee is more enticing, but that’s playing on your aspiration rather than the house itself, in the end it’ll be your paint on the walls and your furniture in the lounge.

    That said, depending on your capability and circumstances you might not want to take on a project house……. in hindsight although i love my house now, moving it to one that needed a rewire, new windows, new kitchen, new bathroom new flooring throughout – all with a baby due in four months was a bit of a stretch!!

    mahalo
    Full Member

    we viewed one house, decided it was the one, put an offer in then entered into a bidding war with another buyer, our final offer was 10k over full asking asking, it sold for 15k over… 2 months later, after viewing a handful of others the estate agent phoned us, sale had fallen through and house was back on the market (at 10K more than original) went to see it again, didnt like it any more!

    br
    Free Member

    Offers Over and Guide Price, are you in Scotland?

    mudshark
    Free Member

    I see those quite a bit in England, guide price seems annoying – aren’t they all guide prices really?

    I had one move that took a month from seeing it to moving in, would have been even quicker but my old solicitor had kept my deeds so took time to send them back to the lender then get them to the new one.

    There is such a thing as a good solicitor but cost rather more than a cheap convenyencor, the ones I talked to charge a %age of property value.

    brooess
    Free Member

    Ignore the asking price… it’s just an arbitrary figure usually invented by someone who thinks a house is a way to make ‘a profit’ rather than somewhere to live.
    Do your research on prices using Rightmove and in particular PropertyBee and Land Registry data – see how much supply is increasing in your area, see how long places take to sell, see how many times prices are being reduced before they sell, keep an eye out for properties which fail to sell with one agent and come back on the market with another agent with a new ‘listed on’ date.
    I saw a place in July which has failed to sell and has now come up with a new agent suggesting it’s new to market – which is a total lie. A place in SE London where I used to live has been on the market for over 2 years but the latest listing says new to market last week…
    Don’t believe a single word the estate agent says, and assume the photos on Rightmove are tantamount to mis-selling – the use god knows what kind of wide-angle lens and photoshop to make small, tatty places look like new build…

    If you’re in London and SE and you can then wait a few months – big announcements due on housebuilding in the autumn statement, interest rates due to go up early next year, BTL yax changes come in next April – plenty of BTL properties coming on the market right now as landlords beginning to realise they’re going to lose money.. this’ll change the balance of supply and demand at the bottom end which no doubt will feed through into chains…

    hexhamstu
    Free Member

    6 weeks is the shortest possible time from having an offer accepted to moving in, we managed it in 7 weeks. This was only possible to me hounding the solicitor and the estate agent constantly and obviously no chain.

    If the house is currently a rental property it is worth £4k less than a similar property that is lived in by an owner who cares about his/her property (obviously this doesnt work if the owner lives in squalor). People don’t look after rentals, but then again people dont look after their own houses so maybe this rule of tumb is nonsense.

    I think our solicitor costs for searches, conveyancing and all that stuff was £1k had an agreed price instead of by the hour, no idea if that is normal?

    We made a score sheet when viewing houses with things that were important to us and scored the houses that way. We also took loads of photos of each house instead of relying on the estate agent ones and memory (because estate agent ones are bullshit and you only remember the good stuff). Make notes because once you’ve looked at 12 houses in a day you’ll start miss-remembering things.

    Remember the estate agent isn’t on your side no matter how nice they are and they will tell you lies. don’t rely on them to tell you market value or if an offer is fair. You are not asking their opinion you are making an offer you would like passed on to the seller.

    mudshark
    Free Member

    6 weeks is the shortest possible time from having an offer accepted to moving in

    Not true, e.g. cash buyers can sort things out in a few days.

    hexhamstu
    Free Member

    Good point, I just assumed they’d have a mortgage.

    andybrad
    Full Member

    My advice is

    All solicitors are evil scum*.

    All estate agents are useless tits who dont know as much about the property or area as you think*.

    * based on my personal experiences.

    keep your eyes wide open at all times and dont accept shit from either.

    hexhamstu
    Free Member

    Make sure you scope out the neighbours having some students next door can turn a nice house into a nightmare.

    theotherjonv
    Full Member

    Remember the estate agent isn’t on your side no matter how nice they are and they will tell you lies.

    Sort of – they aren’t on the vendor’s side either, they’re in it for themselves. Which you can turn to your advantage – they only get paid their 1% or whatever it is after the house sells, so if they can persuade the seller to accept your offer quickly and get things moving, they get their 1% faster. So say you can get them to persuade the vendor that £250K is a really fair price, they get their £2.5K sorted with no extra effort. Holding out for the £26K it was marketed at – might take several weeks more, a load more viewings, and while it gets the seller £10K more, it gets the agent £100. Barely the price of his next ill-fitting shiny suit.

    johndoh
    Free Member

    Not read all the replies but my advice would be to take someone impartial along to look at properties with you. You will see a lovely ‘home’ that you want to live in, they will see past it and see the damp problems or the busy road or the out of date plumbing and electrics.

    onehundredthidiot
    Full Member

    If in Scotland offers over usually means the area is selling well, how much you go over depends on how well. A not of interest will keep you notified of what’s going on especially if going to a closing date.
    Get the sellers report, it gives some info.

    g5604
    Free Member

    Got my solicitors moving by telling them I had handed my notice in. They do NOTHING if you do not shout, threat etc..

    2tyred
    Full Member

    Fingers crossed but I am hopefully completing the sale of our house and the purchase of our new house today!

    The culmination of a two year hunt (on the part of Mrs Tyred) for the right house on the right street in the right part of town at a price we can afford, the viewing and discounting of another 12 or so, the comforting of a vendor who broke down in tears during the viewing, the missing out on a total steal, a complete piece of good fortune in our sale, the writing off of quite a lot of money thanks to previous spectacularly unlucky timing (buying our current house about a week ahead of the 2008 crash), the fear of doing the exact same thing again having had our offer accepted on the day of the EU referendum, an initial 5 week timescale from offer to move date which then became a 5 month timescale, several months of not much happening, some insanely petty negotiation over trifling sums of money, a little clock-ticking brinkmanship and here we are. Hopefully. With any luck we’ll be moved in four weeks from now.

    Hardest part has been keeping the location of the new place a secret from the kids. It’s where they’re desperate to live, closer to their friends, and I didn’t want to risk them being devastated should it not work out.

    Some great advice above. For me, the most important thing is location. That’s the one thing you can know in advance of moving in that you can’t change once you have. Saw some really nice houses that just weren’t in the right place.

    After having lived in old houses and been fed up being cold, having bumpy walls with weird electrics etc, I was keen on a new build this time but where we are is stupidly expensive for new builds, and for us, the disadvantages outweigh the benefits. So we’re going for something in between.

    Only issue now (assuming completion finally happens) is getting organised to move all our junk out when there’s a cyclocross race every weekend between now and moving. And I’m doing alright this season so don’t want to miss any!

    chrishc777
    Free Member

    Cheers for all the responses, a lot of sound advice there. We’re in England not Scotland.

    Looking at allsorts at the moment. Open to somewhere needing work to any extent, if the price is right. Main issue for us is wanting to be closeish to town, still in a quiet area and have parking and a decent garden. Patience is key I suppose. My biggest concern is getting halfway into it and being bled dry by solicitors and running out of money. Friends and collegues have spent over £3k in fees which I couldn’t really afford. At around £145k stamp duty should be less than £500, just concerned about solicitors.

    So if I have an offer accepted and spend 1000s on fees can the seller just pull out and I loose my money?

    nickjb
    Free Member

    So if I have an offer accepted and spend 1000s on fees can the seller just pull out and I loose my money?

    Yep 😕

    If you are feeling really brave you can do it without a solicitor. My last two purchases were solicitor free. First one went pretty smoothly, second had some minor issues which were resolved without too much fuss. Wouldn’t recommend it for a first time buyer with a mortgage though 🙂

    jam-bo
    Full Member
    Chew
    Free Member

    So if I have an offer accepted and spend 1000s on fees can the seller just pull out and I loose my money?

    Potentially…
    If you use a solicitor that only charges on completion will give you a bit of protection, but all of the other costs will just go down the plughole…

    If you’re spending £145k on a house, dont try and cut corners to save a few quid. In the grand scheme of things its not worth it.

    Also dont forget about the other costs once you’ve moved in. Buying spoons, sofas, washing machines, etc… soon add up.

    chrishc777
    Free Member

    Chew, it’s not about cutting corners to save a few quid, but about what we can afford!

    Our current rented house was unfurnished so we have all the necessary stuff, and we’ll only be moving a couple of miles so the actual moving will be cheap

    Chew
    Free Member

    it’s not about cutting corners to save a few quid, but about what we can afford!

    Its one of those times when you’ll just need to have an open chequebook. You’ll get costs popping up everywhere. An extra £200 for another search…..

    I went through the process earlier in the year. Probably spent around £3k for all the costs, but i’d be putting aside £5k to be safe.

    johndoh
    Free Member

    And another consideration – if you don’t have kids but are planning on them in the near future, think about how your needs may change. We loved our last house and completed an extension on it literally a week before my wife gave birth to twins (which made it even more perfect). We managed 4 years before realising it wasn’t an ideal place for a family of four – we wanted a private garden for them to play, space for them to have their own rooms when they were old enough (which they now have) and a second bathroom (not a requirement now, but in three or four years it will be), space to store all the toys, scooters, bikes etc. Then there is the need to be in catchment of good schools…

    chrishc777
    Free Member

    If I had £5k I’d put it aside.

    A quick google suggests there are online conveyancers which do the lot for less than 800 quid, I’m guessing plus stamp duty. Sounds too good to be true, anyone have experience of them?

    Basically if it is seriously going to cost £3-5k I can’t buy anything, my mortgage offer will expire and that’ll be that.

    We don’t have kids and don’t intend to for a while but we’re looking mainly at 3 bed semis so if that happened there would be room.

    johndoh
    Free Member

    A quick google suggests there are online conveyancers which do the lot for less than 800 quid

    We used Simply Conveyancing after my brother had a very good experience with them. Ours was woeful – so much so, the solicitor dealing with our move was on holiday on the day of completion and hadn’t handed over to a colleague! Several rounds of very loud shouting and with a removal van about to drive off with our stuff and stick it in their lock-up for the weekend (as it was getting so late in the day) we eventually completed but it was very hairy – two young children, all our stuff in a van and no-where to sleep was very nearly a reality.

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