Desperate to leave mortgaged property

wobblymummy

Hi there

Looking for some advice really.

Been in our home a couple of years but we expect that the value of the property may now be less than what we owe on it. We are having two estate agent valuations next week.

We cannot stay in the property any longer realistically. The area has gone so downhill that we dread being at home (neighbours, rubbish, crime etc) we have two children and they cant ever go in the garden, we may as well have bought a flat

It is our first property and we have never had any problems paying the mortgage, we did increase it to pay off some debts after a redundancy and so this has pushed our mortgage up. At the time we did not anticipate selling the house for a good few years though.

We have never sold a home before and are new to it all. What should we ask and what if the value is less than the amount outstanding (negative equity) can we still sell the house, what happens if we still owe money when the sale is complete ?

Does the estate agent take their fee straight away from the sale or do we have to pay them direct and how much is it ?

We are looking to rent a property in the short term then look for a shared ownership home which are plentiful in our area.

Thanks loads
:j

G_M

You need to pay off the mortgage in full when you sell - no buyer will take on a property that has someone else's charge registered against it!

If your mortgage is more than the sale price you'll need to find the money from savings. In a very few cases, the mortgage lender might allow you to take out an unsecured loan to pay of the mortgage - but that's a long shot.

You'll need to pay the EA fees too. Usually the solicitor pays them out of the money received from the sale, but if all that money is going to the mortgage lender.......

wobblymummy

Guess we will have to hope that the valuation is decent

We had it valued in 2007 and at that valuation all should be fine but I guess it may have gone down considerably since then....

Maseillo

I hope you get the valuation that you need, but remember that it's the price it will sell for that matters more than the price they will put it on at. Our house is on at £10,000 more than we paid for it 3 years ago which is a relief as we thought it might be worth less - but we are still going to struggle to pay the outstanding mortgage balance, early redemption fee, legal fees, estate agents fees and removals if we take an offer less than the asking price (which we will have to do if we are going to sell!). We didn't have a deposit, so the only equity we have in the house is what we have paid off which doesn't amount to much over 3 years!

chambta

wobblymummy wrote: »

Guess we will have to hope that the valuation is decent

We had it valued in 2007 and at that valuation all should be fine but I guess it may have gone down considerably since then....

Likely, yes. Of course there are plenty of factors but I think back to 2007 and I could easily have sold this house for £115,000, as someone a few doors down did.

I've just accepted my bottom line price of £94,000 to facilitate a move four years later.....

wobblymummy

chambta wrote: »

Likely, yes. Of course there are plenty of factors but I think back to 2007 and I could easily have sold this house for £115,000, as someone a few doors down did.

I've just accepted my bottom line price of £94,000 to facilitate a move four years later.....

Those figures are more or less what we are looking at!