Not something I’m planning on doing anytime soon but keeping a close eye on things so I can buy a place when prices are more sensible. As a first time buyer tho, not sure what order to sort out the mortgage/start looking at houses, especially when lenders aren’t too free with their cash.

If I work out my budget based on salary x3 and add in my deposit then I’ve around 25% deposit and I know what price I can afford. So do I go to lenders to see if they’ll give me that much or do I start looking at houses, find one, put in an offer and then ask the lenders while crossing my fingers…?

ta

Don’t, just live at home with your folks! Then you can live the life, fast car, lots of bikes!

Or you can become another slave to the man.

speak to lender, then find a house make an offer and check with lender again

Get a mortgage offer (it is just a piece of paper saying they will lend you £x) so when you need it, the paperwork is done.

You’ll only get a proper mortgage offer on a specific house. However a chat with a lender will let you know how much they are willing to lend at what cost beforehand.

I would advise at least checking out a mortgage lender first, just to make sure there isn’t any nasty surprises these days like how they calculate your income, deposit required for their deal etc. etc. (plus their costs which can be quite a large fugire).

It’ll show willing and intent if you do see a nice house. First thing the lenders/estate agent will probably ask you is if you’ve got a mortgage. If you can say, yes, got £xxx agreed in principle then at least it shows you’re serious.

Personally, if I was selling I wouldn’t accept any offer until the buyer had a mortgage arranged.

we got an agreement in principle from our lender. Tis basically told us how much we could borrow and started looking for a house within that price range. Make sure oyu speak to at least a couple of mortgage advisors before you decide on one as some are willing to help than others.

Get an offer in principle for something on the high end of what you might want to spend. When you make an offer, make sure the estate agent knows you have an offer in principle that will cover that offer, don’t let em know you have any spare.

If you’ve got 25% deposit and no house to sell, you can bargain quite hard – estate agents and sellers are *desperate* for people like you.

Also, make use the propertybee plugin for firefox to see where house prices have fallen (it makes firefox add this information when you look at listings on http://www.rightmove.com), so you can see if people are serious about moving, and if they’re likely to lower their price (the place we’re buying had lowered 3 times in the last 3 months or something, so we figured they’d go a fair bit lower and it turned out to be true).

Joe

what everyone else has said.

Are you aware of housepricecrash.co.uk some good advice there if you filter out the tinfoil hat wearing survivalist brigade.

speak to an whole of book(?) independant advisor who will be able to find you the best mortgage deal (they shouldn’t charge for the service as they’ll get commission from the lender). Ours got us a cracking deal with Standard Life, which is 0.36% above BOE base.

Definitely get your agreement in principle from your mortgage lender first. Then when you make your offer you can demonstrate that you can move fast and everything is in place which will go in your favour.

Oh and by the way, in these uncertain times make low offers of at least 20-30% off. I’m looking at the moment and most houses I’ve looked at have been on the market for 12-18 months and you can smell the fear from the sellers.

House, then mortgage.

But make sure you’ll still be able to afford the payments when interest rates go up again.

Speak to a decent ‘Whole of Market’ broker, they’ll source you the best thing on the market. Get a Decision In Principle from that lender and then go for the house with extra bargaining power as you have securred a DIP.

Don’t think that a Non Fee Charging broker will find you the best deal though. Procuration fees from lenders are getting lower and lower. There is a massive amount of work for a broker to do – if they offer a full service and basically do everything for you – and a non-fee charging broker could recommend a lender based upon ease of process for him, and not best advice and best deal for you.

Even prime cases are sometimes requiring 2-3 applications to different lenders in the current climate, would a non-fee-charging broker be prepared to do this for very little commission from the ultimate lender? Even Martin Lewis on his website suggests that providing the broker fee isn’t prohibitive, then it’s better to get a good broker who will get you the best product, than scrimp on a few quid for the broker fee!

A good broker will do more work during the process than the solicitor, surveyor and lender, so choosing the right one who will totally look after you is important.