First time buyers....help!

MrsHasman

Hi Guys,

Firs time on here so hope you can all help! Have recently got married and myself and hubby are looking to buy our first home together. Basically don't really have a clue where to start. We've been looking around and think our house budget would be around 70k as we don't want to over stretch ourselves. Have seen lots of properties available for that price in the areas we are interested in. We have around 5k saved so far for a deposit, which having looked around doesn't seem to be great as can't seem to find many 95% mortgages. Have been hearing about vendor gifted deposits...do these still exist? Would we be able to get a mortgage at all or are we best off to continue renting and trying to save some more??

Any help appreciated!

Jen

beecher

Keep saving til you have at least 10%, and also remember to add on money for fees etc

xxd25xx

My friend just bought a house with a £10K vendor gifted deposit.... not sure how they went about it though but they do still exist, especially if the seller is keen to sell.

wymondham

Keep saving until you have the required deposit... If you're looking for a 'short cut' remember to read all small print very carefully..

benjo

I dont know fully how the vendor gifted deposits work, but I know that some lenders will not accept them, since effectively it could be seen as tweaking the price of a property in order to escape the deposit issues, example

My house is worth 100k and you need a 10% deposit (10k), I will gift you 10% but only if you buy my house at 110k (there or there abouts), in reality I pay the deposit, but you pay 10% more than the property is worth and lenders are wary of this.

The more deposit you have, the more choices you have in terms of lenders and favourable conditions ie lower interest rates and that can make all the difference in affordability and making life easy on yourself in the long run.

As mentioned think also about

Solicitors fees £700 ish
Removal fees £500 ish
Mortgage product fee £299 - £1500 (sometimes added to the life of the mortgage, sometimes needs to be paid up front)
Broker fees ??? (if you go down this route - there are also fee free whole of market brokers, but you need to check)
A pot of savings for emergency house repairs

Keep saving, it is addictive and every penny you save as a deposit now will save you pounds in interest payments later - goodluck and let us know how you get on.