Offer accepted - now a few questions

wessexw

Just had an offer accepted - yay!! I'm a FTB so now begins the scary part for me an I have a few questions about the order in which things should happen now.

I'm going to instruct a solicitor and start the ball rolling on Monday with the mortgage but my questions really are about the survey. Is it usual to start on the survey straight away or is it better to wait on formal notice of a mortgage approval before doing the survey?

Also, how do you organise the survey, do you put the surveyor in touch with the EA who then negotiates a time with the vendor for the surveyor to go around? Or does it work some other way.

Thanks!

House_owner

When you apply for your mortgage, your lender will comission a basic survey of the house to make sure it is worth them giving you a mortgage on it.

They will usually give you the opportunity to have a more detailed survey done (called a homebuyers report), you can either use a surveyor they reccomend or find one yourself. Either way, the surveyor will contact the EA to arrange the survey on the house.

You will not get your mortgage offer untill at least the basic survey has been done. Sometimes this will highlight things that need to be repaired in the house before they will give you the money (eg any damp problems). Then you will have to negoiate with the vendor via the EA to get these sorted out.

Best wishes with the house buying process. It is stressful but worth it in the end!

wessexw

Really I meant getting my own private survey done - I intend getting a full survey. So should I wait for the lenders survey to be done first?

nikki1520

Or talk to the surveyor who's doing it and ask for an upgrade - save paying out twice?

wessexw

nikki1520 wrote: »

Or talk to the surveyor who's doing it and ask for an upgrade - save paying out twice?

Is it advisable to go with the lender instructed surveyor? Obviously I'd never go with an EA recomended surveyor due to a possible conflict of interests, I guess there wouldn't be any conflict in the lender surveyor? Is it common to use the lenders surveyor to do your own survey?

motherofstudents

How old is the house, if it is old you might want to have a full structural survey but on something more modern a homebuyers report would be fine. There should be no conflict of interest if you employ a RICS surveyor they are professionals and would give an unbiased and independent survey. Hope it goes well for you.

mufi

I'm terribly out of date, not having bought or sold for many years, but would it not be a good idea to get the basic mortgage survey done first, just in case the valuation comes in at under the offer price and the bank reduces their mortgage offer, forcing the OP to pull out? The full structural survey makes a fair old dent in the old bank balance:eek:.

wessexw

It's a one bed flat but is about 120 years old so I'd like a full survey for peace of mind plus there's one or two specific thing I'd like looked at such as changes some previous owners have made that I'd like to change back to the original myself so I'd like the survey to take a look at those things to make sure that they are possible - or at least give me their best opinion if they're not possible to check out properly from a survey. I think I'd like to wait for the lenders survey first too before paying for a full one, but not sure if thats the done thing.

livalicious

We had our offer accepted 6 weeks ago, and we will only be instructing a surveyor to do home buyers survey and valuation on the property on monday! We got our mortgage offer through a few weeks ago, and the reason we have held off doing the survey till now is because we wanted to make sure the vendors found somewhere and had their mortgage approved first. They pulled out of a sale previously leaving the buyers high and dry after shelling out on fees.

Things could still go wrong from now till exchange, but Id rather not pay for things like survey and searches, until we know that they at least made some commitment themselves, paid fees, etc. Less likely to get cold feet or just pull out on a whim!