New to selling a property and buying ...the process?

NannyV

Hi, I am just after some basic information really. We have a shared ownership property and we purchased the remaining share a couple of years ago, but we now need an extra bedroom.

So we have a 2 bed house now and need a 3 bed for the same value ish, give or take an extra £10k or so.

If you are buying and selling, do you wait untill you have an offer on your house first before putting in offers on other properties? And what if you agree to sell your house but cant find one to buy? How long do people usually wait - what is average?

How much are estate agent fee's/solicitors/hipp pack/stamp duty = total costs roughly?

And lastly - what are your thoughts on selling your house without an estate agent?

And can you house swap a private house as opposed to coucil exchanges etc?

Sorry for all the questions .... just basic answers are all I ask if you have a spare minute:o

PasturesNew

NannyV wrote: »

If you are buying and selling, do you wait untill you have an offer on your house first before putting in offers on other properties?

The way the market is at the moment, this is the best way to proceed.

But, before you do this, have you got enough equity in your present property, and/or savings, to be able to get a mortgage on a different house?

NannyV wrote: »

And what if you agree to sell your house but cant find one to buy? How long do people usually wait - what is average?

In this market, you're best off not annoying buyers because there are so few of them. Consider renting for the short-term just to get yours sold and the money banked.

NannyV wrote: »

How much are estate agent fee's/solicitors/hipp pack/stamp duty = total costs roughly?

Fees: 1-3%
HIP: £200-400
Stamp Duty: £0 up to £175k; then it's 1% up to £250k (so max £2,500; 3% over 500k (so minimum of £7,500).

NannyV wrote: »

And lastly - what are your thoughts on selling your house without an estate agent?

It depends on how you plan to market it and what you'll do about being available to take calls and do viewings. If you do this, get a PAYG phone JUST for calls about the house, then you can at least hand the phone/viewings diary over to anybody else you know to mind if you want and you can answer the phone with your "selling the house" head turned on. You also won't be plagued with random questions from the buyers for the next 5 years just because they have your number still.

NannyV wrote: »

And can you house swap a private house as opposed to coucil exchanges etc?

Yes and no. No you can't. You can find somebody that wants to do a swap, but for the purposes of the mortgage and paperwork it is still the same as if you weren't buying each others' houses. You'd need to raise a new mortgage on their property, complete with valuation/approval - and they'd need to do the same for yours.

Philippa36

Our HIP was £250

Solicitors costs vary immensely, stamp duty depends on the price of the house you're buying, under £175k theres no charge, up to £250k is 1% and over is 3%. Estate agent fees are usually around 1-1.5%.

You can put in an offer of interest on a property if you haven't got an offer on yours, but they don't have to accept any offer that you put in. The estate agent is legally obliged to pass on all offers.

People will wait as long as they want! Some people in our area won't accept viewings unless you have an offer on your own. Again, how long is a piece of string! Mortgage offers can be quick but also can take ages - some people want to sell quickly and some people don't seem to care how long it takes.

Edit: I forgot your last questions about selling a property yourself - difficult unless you're happy to deal with all the queries, organising viewings and managing the offers. House swapping still entails raising a mortgage etc. and I doubt you'd find many places that will want to swap like for like - some people have very odd ideas about what their house is worth!

NannyV

Thanks for the info. Just what I was looking for.

As for if we have enough equity in our property or savings - so you mean if we were to put in an offer on another house without having had an offer made on ours?

I presume that we would go to our mortgage company and re-mortgage/borrow an extra £10k and get that as our mortgage offer in principle, to cover the costs of the new house. I think our current mortgage is about £176000.00 and our house is worth approx. £200,000. And we are looking at properties of about £220,000. Our origional mortgage was borrowing £186,000. So hopefully we could re-mortgage back to £186,000 so effectively taking us up to £210,000 and then we would ask to borrow the extra £10k or try to save up in the meantime to make this less.

Is this how the process works?

Philippa36

You would need to firstly sell for £200,000 in the current market and have enough salary to cover the new mortgage, depending on your combined income. I would suggest speaking to a mortgage adviser and going through the figures with them - they'll tell you if you're likely to get the mortgage you're after.

You also need to bear in mind that mortgage companies are far more reluctant to lend money now and are wanting larger deposits (generally 25%). Plus the monies to cover solicitors/HIP/estate agents fees on top.

NannyV

Philippa36 wrote: »

You would need to firstly sell for £200,000 in the current market and have enough salary to cover the new mortgage, depending on your combined income. I would suggest speaking to a mortgage adviser and going through the figures with them - they'll tell you if you're likely to get the mortgage you're after.

You also need to bear in mind that mortgage companies are far more reluctant to lend money now and are wanting larger deposits (generally 25%). Plus the monies to cover solicitors/HIP/estate agents fees on top.

Its quite a lengthly and costly process just for 1 extra room! But it needs to be done at some point, and Im thinking that its beter to do this while we have our 1 child, than after we have another 1 or 2 as then my income will drop significantly.

Our combined income is about £47,000.00
I just presumed we would re-mortagage to get the extra £10,000 and take that mortgage with us to the new property.

I think you are right, we need to go back and see our financial advisor.mortgage brooker and see what our options are first.

I was wondering if it is beter to put our spare cash into the mortgage by overpaying, or if its beter to put it into savings? We currently have about £5k in savings so I was thinking we will need extra money for all the costs involved, but didnt know if it was beter to reduce the mortgage or just put it into savings.
We are looking at putting away £600 each month

Philippa36

Currently, if you're anything like me, your savings aren't making any interest at all! Unless you have a really good savings account which is paying a higher rate of interest than your mortgage is currently costing, then you're better off putting it into the mortgage.

However, you'll only be allowed to overpay a certain amount each year. It should tell you on your mortgage offer, how much you can overpay.Mention it to your financial adviser as they'll use that when they search for products suitable for your current situation.

NannyV

Philippa36 wrote: »

Currently, if you're anything like me, your savings aren't making any interest at all! Unless you have a really good savings account which is paying a higher rate of interest than your mortgage is currently costing, then you're better off putting it into the mortgage.

However, you'll only be allowed to overpay a certain amount each year. It should tell you on your mortgage offer, how much you can overpay.Mention it to your financial adviser as they'll use that when they search for products suitable for your current situation.

Yeah our saving account isnt good - but if I put it in the mortgage, and then need that money for stamp duty and solicitor fee's - can I get it back?
Just trying to figure out if its beter to be able to get our hans on the money in savings as opposed to in our mortgage.

I suppose we could leave the £5k in savings to cover solicitors and stamp duty.

Philippa36

Yes, keep the £5k in a savings account for all the associated costs, you'll need access to that money. I thought you meant that you wanted to overpay the new mortgage with savings.

Check out the high interest accounts that Martin recommends but make sure you can get hold of the money quickly if you need to.