Sold much quicker expected, grateful but advice needed!!

lelole

Hi,

We have been really lucky - we put the house on the market officially on Monday (well it went on right move the Friday before, but we said no viewings till Mon), and today we accepted an offer just 2.5K short of asking price. We have a cash buyer too. Which is fab, and we are delighted :beer:

But we have a couple of questions? And sorry but they are both ones which there is no definite answer, but wanted some opinions...I bought the house we have sold from a friend as a FTB so have no real experience!

However, we have been told that the buyer is very keen to "get moving" and we have been advised to get a solicitor set up to go. However we have not viewed any houses yet - we were going to start next week as we assumed we would be on the market for a a few weeks at least and didn't want to fall in love with a property but not be able to do anything! Obviously the estate agent wants to get their fee quickly, but how long do we have to find a property, before we risk losing the buyer?

Secondly, we have decided to stay with the same mortgage company as we were lucky enough to get a lifetime tracker at 0.7 above base rate - which is portable. But we do need to extend our borrowing (probably to double). We have been offered 3 different fixed rates 2yr, 3yr and 5yr.
Assuming that interest rates may well rise in the future, is it best to aim for a shorter or longer fixed rate??

Thank you...

Leah x

poppysocks1

Firstly - I would start looking for somewhere immediately. If you dont find anything then could you consider going into rented so as not to lose your buyer?

Second one - interest rates are so low right now that your rate sounds good and only you can decide if you want the security of payments for 2, 3 or 5 years. If it was me I would probably go for 5 if I knew that I would still have a mortgage to pay off over 5 years and more as its security of knowing your payments, but thats just me! then you can reassess after that, plus saves any more remortgaging fees after only 2 years.

tootsmyboots

Well done. We have just sold ours too (quicker than I expected) after a month on the market for 5k under our asking price. We hadnt started viewing, but had looked on RM. So last week we did a monster session of viewings. As it happens we have found a house to offer on, but had considered moving into rented so as not to lose our buyer. One thing I would say is if you move into rented you are then in a good position to buy, but check how long your mortgage gives you to port it, if that is what you want to do.

We are porting ours so we wont lose out with the Early Repayment Charge, but ours has a grace period where if you buy again in so many months you get it back anyway.

When our fixed rate runs out at xmas we are planning to fix for 5 years as interest rates are so low and this will see us through until our children are at school, giving us a stable idea of outgoings.

Have fun viewing, but dont buy the best of a bad bunch. Only buy if the house ticks the boxes you want.

lelole

Hi, thanks for your reply.

We saw a property last night, and liked it but not enough to offer. Unfortunately we have planned to go to a wedding in London this weekend, so while I can do some viewings 2day things are out until next Monday. Do you think that a week or so will be too long? We don't want go into rented as we will lose our tracker mrtgage which we are only paying 1.2% on so overpaying by loads at moment.

Ta 4 the advice re: mortgage fix. Should clarify that the additional borrowing won't be at this fab rate, just the original borrowing. If we take the additional borrowing, we will then be fixed in and I was trying to work out if it is a good idea to fix for longer, because I don't want to be stuck with the tracker if the rates shoot up, as we won't be able to switch to another lender if the new borrowing is still fixed.

Really hard to succinctly explain, hope it makes sense!!

purplebuzz

Hi,

We are in the same situation as well. After waiting for the HIP to be ready, our property was technically on the market from Friday afternoon.

We then had 5 viewings set up for over the weekend, and we were lucky enough that one of those offered. We accepted this offer as it was what we wanted to acheive (and more than we actually thought we could get!)

Since then we have been frantically viewing houses to try and find something that we like. We want to move straight on as we can also port our mortgage over to the new property, and won't get such a good rate if we were to rent for 6 months say before buying again.

We have put an offer in on somewhere, but we are still waiting to hear if it has been accepted (the vendor is trying to see if they can get what they want with our offer)

Fingers Crossed for all of us that it works out well

getmore4less

Ask the buyer,

< 4 weeks to complete is possible and they may want that so be prepared to move into rented.

Check the lender for how long you have to port the loan most allow a break.

If away the weekend take a day off work and view Friday, don't view together you get more coverage by doing it seperately and short listing for a second viewing.

Be clear you need a place where people can move quickly finding a place won't help if they are the same as yopu nad not got the basics in place, like a convayancer.


As for the mortgage long fix is probably the way to go, but look at the fees and rates.

CONSPIRACY time.
Quick Cash buyer, have they a connection with the agent? how did you price the place? did you do your own research or just what the agent said?

mlz1413

Totally agree you need to find out if your mortgage company has a grace period, mine was 6 mnths, to find a new place as that will remove a lot of pressure.

If the buyer really wants in then you need to decide now if you are prepared to lose your tracker deal and keep the sale - if you decide against this I'd tell the buyer now and see if they are prepared to wait for you.

Also if necessary can you put your stuff into storage and camp out at friends and family if you only need a month or two between buying and selling?


Re the fixed deal as you will (hopefully) have part tracker part fixed I'd go for the longest fixed rate to give you some security against a period of really high rates.

Soot2006

From the other perspective. We were FTB in excellent position to proceed quickly - happy to give notice on rental at any time. We viewed lots of houses and only made offers on the condition that things would "proceed quickly" ... What that meant in real terms is that EA started only showing us houses that were empty, desparate sale or ready to move within weeks.

In the end "quickly" was nearly 7 weeks (and that was with the best will in the world with both sides wanting to hurry things up), and thus we should be completing tomorrow!

lelole

Hi, thanks all for your advice. I didn't get a chance to read it all before we went away on thurs.

However, it didn't make any difference in the end as on friday we got the phone call to say the buyer had pulled out.

So feeling very deflated but much less pressured!

Thanks again,

Leah

hamblettamaud

look, in today's climate the only obvious answer is sell-sell-sell, no matter what. and get a mortgage at today's interest rates - you won't get better. i'm sorry if that's the obvious answer but you know, it really is the obvious answer.