3 questions for the price of 1 :D

adibranch

Hi all,

First time poster.. great forums

Anyway, just a couple of quickies as i'm kinda looking for info ...

Background info: Living with my girlfriend in her house and looking to move. Our House was originally for sale and we got a buyer through the estate agent at our asking price. Needless to say we found another house to move into and was in the process of applying for a mortgage at Nationwide (reservation fees were paid of £400). The sale then fell through due to the chain breaking below us. Hence, a halt was called to everything. All this was six months ago.

In the months following, our estate agents weren't doing a brilliant job, so several weeks ago we took the house off the markjet to give it a break, after which we were going to re-enlist with another estate agent.
Folowing this our original buyer came back and said she still wanted our house and she is now sold ! Good news all round. We are now looking to buy a new house and recontinue with the mortgage etc.

Clear as mud? good.. then i'll continue with the questions..

1) Are we still eligible for the original estate agents fees for introducing us to our buyer? Or is the fact that the sale has been agreed considerably after we were listed with them mean that we are in essence now selling privately, and not eligible for fees?

2) I have heard that we have lost our original reservation fees paid to Nationwide, and will have to repay this as it has been over 3 months since the agreement was drawn up? Is this the case? If so, would contesting it/threating to move to another lender, get my fees back?

3) My girlfriends mortgage is for about £35k in total, repayment at about £160 per month. Her house has been sold at £85k. the new house we intend to move into is £145k. We were going to use 50k of the house sale as a deposit for the new house, and mortgate about 90k.
We've now been told that there is a way to keep her current house, and rent it out to pay for the 50k deposit which we would somehow attach to one or two mortgage/s. As you can see, i'm a bit clueless about that... totally. How does this work? And is it a good idea?

Thanks for any help !!!

silvercar

1) yes, they made the introduction so they are entitled to the fee.
2) probably - asking nicely may help but normally it would be new money on a different property and you will have to stump up again. I did! Ask them, they may be kind!
3)you transfer some of the equity out of the first property, get a buy-to-let mortgage on that and then get a residential mortgage on your new home. There are a few ways of doing this, best to see a broker.

You could increase the mortgage on your GFs house to about 65k, giving you 30k equity as a deposit on your new place. There are a number of ways around this but it is possible if the figures stack up. You need to consider if you want to be a landlord and want the resposibility of 2 mortgages.

We are currently looking at buying out the bottom of the chain, so will be in a similar situation.

adibranch

Thanks for the reply.. much appreciated.

I'm a bit miffed about the possibility of losing out on the reservation fee, as although i'm sure its listed in the T&C, we were not aware of it and would have expected some kind of 'your reservation fee expiry date is approaching' kind of letter from them..
ahhhh to live in an ideal world.

I'll look into the buy to let option a bit more i think... at the moment it seems appealing but i'm sure there are reasons why people dont do it on a regular basis.. mainly due to hassle i guess..

anyway, thanks for the reply.

fbrj

adibranch wrote:

1) Are we still eligible for the original estate agents fees for introducing us to our buyer? Or is the fact that the sale has been agreed considerably after we were listed with them mean that we are in essence now selling privately, and not eligible for fees?

Do you still have a copy of the original terms of their appointment? Most contracts will cover your circumstances - but often differ in the length of time, during which you owe them fees, for an applicant they introduced. This period (ie between termination of the contract and the time that your property is sold to their applicant) can range between a couple of months and a year. This often is a point to negotiate when apponting an agent.

adibranch

well, the time between them introducing us and the time to us being sold is about seven months.. The tie in period with the estate agents was twelve weeks, but we only delisted with them about six weeks ago. I'll check it out.

Thanks