To those BUYING in these difficult times....

CheeseCat

Congrats to those who have started the buying process!

I think thats natural Matt as its such a big purchase. My house is in a relatively cheap area :beer: but I am still worried about it - 'am I doing the right thing?/Is it the right house?/can I afford to do the little jobs that need doing?' etc but I know I love the house really I just think its unavoidable to worry a little about something that costs so much.[STRIKE][/STRIKE]

I am in Week 2 (must change my sig ) My main worry at the moment is 'Will my mortgage application be accepted?' and then I suppose i'll move on to 'Will my survey give the right valuation?' stress stress worry and stress!

I think once the survey has come back ok, I can breathe a bit. Second viewing on Saturday

calliopeviolet

Cheesecat: you sound just like I've been! It really is a process of endless worrying. Now I've moved on to 'If the survey shows too many problems, will I ever find anything decent that I can afford?' I'm in the S-W and the houses are SO expensive down here. I just know that I can't bear to continue paying over the odds in rent. It's so ridiculous that the mortgage is £300 less than the rent we're currently paying. Madness.

LisaB1970

Ooooh thought i'd join this thread too! Trying to buy a repo and almost 3 weeks later we SILL haven't had a yay or nay from the mortgagees....verrrrry frustrating....grrrrrr! And i know if we ARE accepted we may have weeks of stress and worry to go through before contracts are even exchanged!

sonastin

In my experience, the worst thing about trying to buy a repo isn't the short deadline or the fear of being gazumped - its the chinese whispers that take place when you're trying to get anything out of the vendor. You can either ask your solicitor to ask their solicitor to ask the vendor. Or you can ask the estate agent to ask the asset management company to ask the vendor. Either way you're two clicks away from the person who makes the decision. So by the time the answer comes back, its the answer to a different question. And you can't tell whether its because they misunderstood what you were asking or they are deliberately not telling you the answer.

Good luck with it - here's hoping the only things you need to hear from them are that your offer has been accepted and exchange/completion dates have been set for...

LisaB1970

Thanks Sonastin. We know who the mortgagee is and i did call yesterday to see if it was them who actually held the deeds, but they wouldnt tell me a thing! They said they wanted the best price for a house (they didnt even ask which property it was) and i completely understand that, but how can they get the best price if its taking so long for them to decide if our offer is good enough or not! The EA said the asset management company has recently changed hands and theres a hoard of paperwork that is involved and thats whats taking so long. The EA isnt calling us bak when they say they will and all we have had is "we'll try and get you an answer by tomorrw" which, of course never comes! Hubby wants to withdraw, but he knows as well as i do that this house would be great for us. I guess we'll have to play the waiting game as frustrating as it is!

stmatt

Cheesecat, thanks for your reply. Its reassuring to know others worry about the right thing. I'm not sure if I"m supposed to love the house but never had that attachment to a house until its mine:)

Spoke to the bank about mortgages last night and they're happy to proceed with our figures but obviously need to pass credit checks. It looks like its going to take a couple of weeks to get all the paperwork sorted before they agree formally - is this normal? Just realised that we're not on the electoral register and hubby doesn't have his name on any utility bills, I get all our statements online so I've had to phone up to get originals.

So now I'm worried that this is going to take such a long time to get together that we're going to get gazumped.

sonastin

LisaB1970 wrote: »

Thanks Sonastin. We know who the mortgagee is and i did call yesterday to see if it was them who actually held the deeds, but they wouldnt tell me a thing! They said they wanted the best price for a house (they didnt even ask which property it was) and i completely understand that, but how can they get the best price if its taking so long for them to decide if our offer is good enough or not! The EA said the asset management company has recently changed hands and theres a hoard of paperwork that is involved and thats whats taking so long. The EA isnt calling us bak when they say they will and all we have had is "we'll try and get you an answer by tomorrw" which, of course never comes! Hubby wants to withdraw, but he knows as well as i do that this house would be great for us. I guess we'll have to play the waiting game as frustrating as it is!

There is no point in pulling out until you have an alternative. Leave your offer with them but carry on looking for somewhere else. I've spent the last 7 months waiting for the asset management company and the mortgagee to pull their finger out and get on and sell the property. The reasons I've waited so long are:
1) I can't find anything else that is better in any aspect, let alone all aspects (type of area, proximity to work, friends, motorway network, size of house, size of garden, garage, etc etc etc)
and
2) They HAVE to sell it. Its not like they can take it off the market and decide they're not going to move!

I've viewed maybe a dozen houses while I've been waiting and saved at least 50 on rightmove as "just-in-cases" but so far I haven't found anything worth telling them to stuff it up their backsides!

LondonAndy

Hi guys

I have now had my survey and all is well - no probs at all other than minor cosmetic stuff. The valuation is OK for the mortgage approved so another hurdle cleared.

Better start organising my many pots of deposit + fees into one place.

Over to the solicitor now....

Good luck to all those going through a transaction.

Andy

PS - Have you Rightmovers downloaded "Propertybee" ?? I love it, it reveals as you search through rightmove when properties are decreased in price or the details amended. Even more addictive. You need Firefox for it to work.

LisaB1970

Hey folks. Great news today, We have had our offer accepted! However we still have a long way to go. We've decided we needed a structural survey done as the hosue is around 100 years old, so were going to go with our mortgage lender but they wanted nearly a grand. So we've gone for the basic one with them and instructed a chartered surveyor do do a separate structural one for us and both of those come in at half the price of the structural one from the bank! The story we go from the EA was we were upa against an investor who they managed to talk out of buying because they convinced him/her the house should go to a family??? This was the first we'd heard of an investor! The call to say we'd been accepted came half an hour after i called the company we were sure were the agents for the mortgagees trying to find out if they were acting for the mortgagees and what the hold up was! Although it could have been coincidence because i never gave them the house details or my name just the area it was in, and the very nice lady on the other end of the phone kindly gave me a direct number for the MD of the agents.......coincidence or not? hmmmmmm
Anywhooo fingers crossed it goes smoothly and quickly :-)

LondonAndy

Well done LisaB !! That's great news.