The FTB club

Bone_Idle

lauren1983 wrote: »

Hi Bone Idle,

Congratulations on the house :T
Its realy exciting isnt it! We also have been saying the house rather than our house.I keep having to correct myself though

We have had our completion date now, 8th may but im still scared that things could go wrong!

If i could advise you on anything then it would be always be bugging everyone involved. You might feel abit pushy and they might get sick of you but things will get done alot quicker. Maybe because they just want you to stop bugging them :rotfl:but it works!!

Good luck with it all

Lauren

Thanks Lauren and Hockeyduo! I'm not great at being pushy but will have to learn...

lauren1983

backtomum wrote: »

Hi Lauren1983 - yep, it's been a hard slog - I am so excited but nervous at the same time - the thought of having no money is slightly freaking me out! Good luck in your purchase and I hope you'll be very happy in your new home. We went into the branch to do our transfer - there is a fee of £30 for the same day transfer so we opted for the 3 day transfer which is free!

3 day transfer.Hmm... I think i will ask my solicitor if i could do that instead of sending a cheque i will feel better doing that i think.

I know what you mean about having no money!!!:eek: Im realy nervous because im not used to paying bills anymore and even though we have done it before i keep saying to hubby what if ...? what if ....? i think im driving him mad lol

I think i will be in this forum for along time trying to save every penny!!

peachey33

Hi

I am new to the forum

My partner and I have a 15% (we hope) deposit to put down on our first home. We are looking to spend a maximum of £110k, and have seen a nice, old 3 bed house that hopefully we can get for that amount (hopefully less) after negotiating! We have found what appears to be a good mortgage deal with YBS, which is a fixed offset mortage, at 5.89% for 5years. As its a FTB special mortgage, there are no mortgage reservation fee's etc. We only have to pay £30 for the fund transfer and £90 on completion of the mortage. They will also pay for the basic valuation (or towards the homebuyers) and help towards the legal costs also. I have been looking around at mortgage deals for quite a while, and this seems to be a pretty decent offer. Nationwide's similar mortage is 5 years fixed at 6.6%, with a £995 fee and no help!! Any thoughts?

I was also wondering how we chose a solictor, or does the lender assist with that if they are helping with legal costs? Everything is starting to seem very daunting, and i almost want to run away and stay living with my Mum forever :rolleyes:

We think we'll need to be very cheeky with our first offer if we put one in, so any tips on how not to offend would be useful

Xinpei

hi welcome peachy. Comparing the two deals you described, it seems like YBS is better. A 5 year fix is a good idea as well - to give the market more time to recover whilst you're protected against rising interest rates. We went for a 2 year fixed at 4.99% - 15% deposit like yourself then a 3 year on SVR. This was with Coventry building society. If we could do it again, we would have gone for a 5 year fix too but the rates for those deals were very much higher.

I am not sure what they mean by helping with legal costs. I found ringing up the local socilitors worked - get at least 3 - 5 quotes on the phone, request for them to send their quotes in writing to you so you can compare what is being covered by each solicitor. Then decide on one - ring them and let them know. Tell your EA next so he can pass details to the vendor's solicitors and also to send them the memorandam of sale (the EA will do that, not you).

I think in the market now, you have to be cheeky with your offer! Dont worry abou offending anybody hun, they can only say no. Just be sure what your limit is and be prepared to walk away - don't FALL IN LOVE with the house until you get the keys! There are more sellers coming onto the market so you will find another one if THE ONE doesnt work out!

Let us know how it goes, good luck!

jinglespringles

Hi All,

I have been reading these bords for a while, and was wondering if you could give me some advise please.
Me and my partner are FTB, have a morgage, deposit, solicitor ect in place. We have seen a house that we like but are getting the feeling that the EA is messing us about!

The house is up for £77k, it is a repo and needs a bit of work, my partners dad is a builder/HIB surveyer so he had a look at the property for us (new boiler, damp proof, new kitchen, chimney needs re-pointing and decoration). We initally put an offer in for £60k which got turned down staight away. The EA asked us to give them our max offer(i'm not stupid i wasnt going to give them that info), they even went as far as asking our FA whats the biggest morgage we could get!

I phoned the EA and spoke to a different person as the lady we had been dealing with was out of the office for the rest of the day. I explained that our max offer would be £62500K due to the amount of work needed. I then asked if they had told the seller of the amount of work, which they had not. 10mins later the original lady phoned us back (strangly came back to the office!!) and assured us that they was obtaining quotes on the work and would present this to the the person reprosenting the seller(bank) with our offer as they did not know that the house needed this much work.

As this was the thursday before the easter bank hols i did not expect to hear from them until quite late on the following week.

The EA phoned on the following wednesday to inform us that another offer had been made and the seller wanted our max offer and the max offer of the other party so they could look at both and make up their mind on what to do!. Although i found this strange our max offer was always going to be £65K so i offered that. It has been a week now since that conversation! How long does it take a bank to look at two offers and go "ya we except that one or neither"?
My feeling is that there is no other offer and they are just messing us about in the hope we up our offer.
Im sorry it a long story but i would really like your/any advise as to what to do?

Thanks for any help
jingles

peachey33

Xinpei wrote: »

.

I am not sure what they mean by helping with legal costs. I found ringing up the local socilitors worked - get at least 3 - 5 quotes on the phone, request for them to send their quotes in writing to you so you can compare what is being covered by each solicitor. Then decide on one - ring them and let them know. Tell your EA next so he can pass details to the vendor's solicitors and also to send them the memorandam of sale (the EA will do that, not you).

YBS will pay for our legal costs, as part of the FTB mortgage deal. :T

jinglespringles

Hi All,

Just a little update!

Spoke to the EA today and asked what was going on, she said that the other offer was bigger than ours and if we would like to put another offer in then we can, if we dont then our chances of getting the house are very slim. I wasnt suprised that she said all this but to go a week without phoning us to advise this is in my eyes out of order.

However what did suprise me was at the end of the conversation she stated " of course you are getting your deposit through HomeChoice!"
Now i have never told her where we are getting our deposit form, however the "independant" FA (we didnt use his services in the end) who works from their office does know that i looked at this option! we didnt go with this option for many reasons, 1 being we managed to get the cash for a deposit through family. The FA we did go with doesnt know we looked at this option so i know it didnt come from her, she knows we have cash.

The EA seemed very shocked that we had the deposit in cash and was not using this method. So the bank thinks that we havent got a cash deposit and that the sale would take many months and a lot of hassle to sell to us before another person put a offer in.

I so frustrated with the whole thing and have no trust for EA's (not that i had a lot in the first place ) and i cant tell you how angry i am if the EA got her info from the "independant" FA, surly he is not allowed to do that?

Anyway sorry to vent but im just so fed up with the whole situation. Any advise would be gratefull

Jingles

patch3228

jinglespringles wrote: »

I so frustrated with the whole thing and have no trust for EA's (not that i had a lot in the first place ) and i cant tell you how angry i am if the EA got her info from the "independant" FA, surly he is not allowed to do that?

Anyway sorry to vent but im just so fed up with the whole situation. Any advise would be gratefull

Jingles

Hi Jingles,

I don't believe there are formal rules to stop the EA from doing this, which is why I never used the in-branch FA.

The EA even tried guilt tripping me into using their FA by saying "we work so long hours that this additional commission makes the late evenings all worthwhile...etc etc"

The general consensus re: EA from a Thread I started when I was at your stage in the buying process:

Don't Trust

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1504745&highlight=

Bone_Idle

We played it a little dumb when we were doing our viewings - said our budget was at a level 15% higher than we could actually afford, then once we'd put our offer in were able to make it completely clear that we knew what we were doing!

We're hoping that our survey will get done within the next week or so. Our vendor has to wait for probate on the bungalow she's moving to, but after that things will hopefully move very quickly! They need to - our DD is getting to the stage where she might start walking soon, and it'll be a hassle fitting stair gates in our rented house then taking them down again!

AlecE

Hi,

I've been lurking on here for a few weeks now and have found so many useful posts and articles on here - thanks to all the contributors!

I've been looking at houses for just over six weeks and although my first attempt at offering on a house failed (ended up bidding against someone else who was a cash purchaser and willing to go significantly higher than me!) my second attempt has succeeded!!

The house was on at £175k (reduced from £180k) and has just had new double glazing (just had as in that they were still fitting it when I went for the first viewing), carpets and new paint throughout. I initially went in at £165k (with no intentions of that being accepted) and then upped to it to £170k. At this point the vendor said that if I went to £173k they would take it off the market and it was mine. Needless to say I came back with that a little later and true to their word they did. Even when someone else who'd pulled their second viewing forward to that afternoon (but I offered before they visited) went in at asking (and said they'd be willing to go over asking) the vendors turned them down saying they'd agreed a sale with me - nice to know that for some people at least, their word is still their bond!

I have applied for the Post Office 5 year fixed mortgage at 4.15% (I got in the night before it was removed from their site, though it should still be available until Monday IIRC) and so far everything is going smoothly with it - the application was accepted instantaneously and the surveyor should be visiting the vendors sometime between Monday and Wednesday to prepare the home buyer's report. After that I think it should all be down to my solicitor I think. Fortunately there's no chain, the vendors are moving out to Spain, and I'm privately renting (with a 4 week notice period I think) so fingers crossed it should be smooth, plain sailing...:cool:

The vendors are also keen to leave behind/sell quickly a fair few items from in and around the house so hopefully we can come to some good arrangements over some of that too.

Well I just thought I'd add my 2p worth to the thread.

Thanks to all those wonderful contributors out there, I hope I can offer a little assistance once I get into this a little further.

Alec