House Buying - Moneysaving Tips

Lucy-Gizmo

jetsetgem - stamp duty, solicitors fees etc. I've just bought somewhere of roughly the same value and with deposit etc, it's cost me between 15-20k!

jetsetgem

Lucy-Gizmo - what were the fees without your deposit?

taz8130

We are in a similar situation at present. We currently have our home up for sale (only went on market yesterday).

We are looking at purchasing a Redrow new build, local to us.

I am lucky in that I have a house that I rent out that will be vacant in four weeks and we can move into that while we get a property at the right price.

I will be paying cash for the house and will be able to move within 28 days.

Once we have sold our house, the plan is to go into the sales office and offer 13% less than listed price (bearing in mind that they offered me 5% off when I called in the other week, just looking).

In addition I am hoping that further negotiations can be made with respect to recessed lights in living-room, hall, toilets & kitchen. Carpets and turf aswell.

Redrow's financial half-year is December, so we can wait till then to go into office with this offer

Would you say this was a reasonable offer that they would deal on ?

******** Have moved this to it's own thread *******

marcssteve

Well, I am also not that much expert in this case but I guess most of the time it depends upon the nature of the dealers/landlords that they agree with the negotiations or not. Well in this case sometimes dealers also take the favor of the party which is buying the home, if they feel that the point mentioned is genuine. However this is just my own opinion.

trimner

Hi all,

I'm a first time buyer and as we speak the estate agent telephoned today and my first offer was refused.

The house was priced at £139,950 and I put an offer in for £129,950 it’s been on the market for 3 weeks. The vendor wants more money due to the money he has spent on the property but obviousley wouldn't state.

The boiler was replaced about 18 months ago and the driveway was re-tarmac, the rooms apart from the bathroom have been painted to neutral colours, the house is currently empty and believe it was rented out previously.

But I was told somebody put an offer in below mine and also there is a lot of interest so I’ve was told, but as far as I’m aware I’m the highest bidder.

It is stressful and exciting and you can get carried away, I’m just going to leave it and see what happens and wait for them to get back intouch.

rubeccamatthews

Thanks for the post Andrew Smith. well you have always been very supportive in the major issues. and the post you did this time is currently a hot issue .. well i must say here that the Govt policies and rules and regulation must also be focused in these kind of matters

khgibb

My husband and I have been looking for a house as first time buyers seriously for 6 months, but been waiting for about 2 years to buy (put on hold due to changing jobs). Everything that came up this year was either too small/manky or out of budget and we are fed up at having had to rent for the past 6 years, paying ever increasing money to someone else.

Last week we saw a house come on the market for £315k and went to see it straight away, really liking it. The people before us were already on their second viewing so we felt we had to move fast as there hasn't been much around in our area and we know most properties in that region tend to go within a couple of weeks.

Kinda wish I'd found this forum last week though, as we had no idea how much to offer. In the end we went in with £300k (95%) which was accepted straight away. After the initial excitement I'm now worried we're paying over the odds as we weren't expecting it to be accepted.

Research on proprety bee since then has shown it's a new build that went on the market in May last year at £349,950 and was reduced in Nov last year to £315k . It was under offer in May this year which fell through as the buyer pulled out, and came back on the market at £315k last week. Its not been lived in yet so it still a brand new purchase. I don't think we saw it on the market before as we didn't want to go past £300k max, so to start with weren't looking at anything over that. I'm also worried that it was on the market for much longer that we originally thought at that price, so wonder why that is given how fast most things in that price sell in the town.

Ulimately we see ourselves aiming to move to a bigger house in 5-10 years so we want to make sure we don't make a loss on the price (housing market crashes excuded!) and get at least as much as we paid for it in the long term.

Does our deal sound reasonable? I know it depends on the individual case, but interested in thoughts from others. As an obessive money saver I have always hated paying full price for things and don't like feeling I've not got a good deal

I hate this house buying thing - it seems until you make the mistakes it's difficult to know how best to play it, and its expensive to make small mistakes!

khgibb

Fridaysmove wrote: »

One way to save money when buying a house is not to be afraid to spend a bit on investigating the property before you exchange. For example RICS reckon that a 1/4 of HomeBuyer Reports find a few thousand in necessary repairs. It is perfectly reasonable to further negotiate the price based on the surveyors findings - especially if you made your offer subject to survey and contract. Homebuyer reports are cheap as chips these days so they could end up saving you vastly more than they cost. They also include a professional valuation of the property so again - if your surveyor reckons it is worth less than the price you have agreed on you may want to re-negotiate.

With it being a new build there shouldn't be much that get's picked up in the surveys I woud have thought. Do surveys actually give you a real market value? I.e. if we had been in a bidding war for personal reasons and gone over the asking price and ended up paying more than it would be worth to most others, would a survey give you a rough guide to what it would normally sell for?

chrisgreende

I have never posted to a forum before and I hope you will forgive me if I get this procedure wrong. I have retired and will return from Germany soon and wanted to purchase a house in England. After many hours scouring the property sites I have seen a number of properties which interests me.

After submitting bids to the estate agents which were accepted, we engaged a solicitor and surveyor to proceed with the purchase. The estate agents informed us that they were legally obliged to market the property until contracts were exchanged because the banks had a duty to the Tax Payer. On both occasions however, we were gazumped by this practice of continued marketing costing hundreds of £'s.

In a free market I do not object to the practice of securing the best price, but I do object to the practice of accepting multiple offers which consequently costs those buyers who were unsuccessful a great deal of money.

Are the Banks treating its English customers as idiots or are they continuing to pursue corrupt practices to manipulate the market facilitated by the Government. In Scotland people can safely proceed with the legal and inspection costs once an offer has been accepted because once accepted it is binding and the buyer is protected from the "Art" of gazumping.

My reasons for posting this thread are two fold, firstly I would like to know if there are any mechanisms for widely publishing this practice thus warning others, and secondly if anyone knows of a method of reducing the legal and surveying costs if a buyer finds the Banks have gazumped them.

PRIORITY86

I am buying a house that was built in 1955 but as had a side and rear extensions the surveyor as got back to my mortgage lender and said its a new build i am so confused as now they are saying the need 15% deposit how can this be when it was built in the 50s ??????? Plz help