Our offer has been accepted! Now what...?

purply

Hi,
Our offer on a house has been accepted today and to tell you the truth we didnt expect it. But we are pleased!
Thing is we are going away at the weekend for three weeks but really want to get the ball rolling asap. What do we need to do?

We are in the process of looking at mortgages-and cant decide on which one to go for.
I think we are going for alliance and leicester.
We are looking at 95% mortgage and it seems we have a lot of fees to pay up front-e.g. higher lending fee, product fee etc.
We have enough to cover the deposit.

Ideally we would like to pay these fees up front so we are not paying interest on them.

Any advice about how we should be doing things?

Doozergirl

Congratulations

You should be seeing (should have seen really) an Independent, whole of market mortage broker. They are able to search the entire market for you and come up with the best deal. FAR better than trawling the high street, they are virtually guaranteed to save you £1000s in the long term.

It's a real shame that you are going away tomorrow without having anything in place. Ideally you'd already have a mortgage agreed in principle before putting in your offer and would be able to give the nod to your broker before you go.

Don't be surprised if your vendor gets jittery - waiting three weeks for someone when you're not even sure they can get a mortgage is a nerve racking experience! Hopefully the fact that it is Christmas and that most solicitors seem to be shutting up shop until New Year will work in your favour.

See if you can get some quick advice on the Mortgages board now or tomorrow morning. There might be somewhere there who can at least set the ball rolling for you. Better safe than sorry

Doozergirl

Mortgage board:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/forumdisplay.html?f=15

purply

Thanks for your reply!

I have been in touch with London and Country and am hoping that someone will get back to me tomorrow.

Do you think I need to be looking at other brokers too?

This is all new to me and I realise we have been doing things the wrong way around. Took a while to get through all the information about the different mortgages around!

But hopefully we have made a decision now and i will ring A & L and get the mortgage application process started tomorrow.

Hope the vendors are patient people...

Doozergirl

I've not dealt with them personally, but London & County will be perfect, I'm sure. As long as someone is whole of marketm which they are, of course.

Unless A&L have been recommended by someone like L&C, then hold fire until you speak to someone. Don't be panicked by what I said into doing something that isn't MoneySaving I'm sure you'll be pleasantly surprised once you've had that talk with L&C.

Have a look at the House Buying Sticky thread at the top here. I;m the author, but it's all AndrewSmith's hard work that went into it.

You can explain this all to the EA tomorrow. If they do have a mortgage advisor, it might be worth speaking to them tomorrw just to confirm salary multiples etc. You don't have to use them (unless they come up with the best deal of course) but it will allow them to confirm that you can afford the house and keep your vendors happy. Not something I'd normally recommend, but if time is tight

purply

Its so nice to get another opinion!
Very helpful too-thankyou.

Ok, I wont ring A&L at 8am in the morning like I was planning to(!)

Will ring London and Country first and hopefully they can get back to me ASAP.

Really want to get this done tomorrow-could the timing be any worse?!

Doozergirl

purply wrote:

Ok, I wont ring A&L at 8am in the morning like I was planning to(!)

Really want to get this done tomorrow-could the timing be any worse?!

LOL!

It always happens like this. Never easy - and gets worse usually. It's a rollercoaster.

Best of Luck to you!

purply

Just read the sticky about house buying-PHEW!

Good stuff.

Just need to bear it in mind now.
Cheers.

japsybapsy

For your information,

When I bought my house, I was looking for a tracker mortgage. Called up L&C and they asked me if I had seen any products myself. I said A&L at 4.49% (at the time). L&C went off to hunt for me and called back to say that the A&L I told them about was the best they could find too.

When I applied, I decided to apply direct to A&L at a branch so that I have someone I can speak to if necessary and save the chance of my important documents being lost in the post. It was at this point that the A&L mortgage advisor told me that I could actually get an extra 0.1% off the rate (4.39%) if I opened a current account with them. So I did. The account is free, provided I pay 500 a month in to the account (which is fine for me, I use it to pay the mortgage.)

Point is, I got a better rate going to the lender directly than going through L&C. I called up L&C about the extra 0.1%, they couldn't match it. There were benefits going through L&C rather than A&L, but they were not important for me.

leftieM

Just to add to that, A&L currently give £250 cash back if you have a current account with them and take out a new mortgage. If you go with A&L make sure you do both - there are other A&L current account incentives too so check it out.

purply

thanks for that-that's interesting to know-i wouldnt wantto change banks (loyalty and that for current one), maybe a current account for just the mortgage payment could be do-able

I haven't thought about the tracker mortgage-just really looked at the fixed mortgages.

Still haven't been able to get in touch with London and Country-apparently skeletan staff.

BUT i need to get my mortgage sorted by end of today!!!

may just go for A and L fixed rate at 4.99%. Dont think London and Country wil find any better.