Landlord wants to sell this house - we might buy, advise please!

wiggly

OK, well we've lived here now for nearly 3 years, its a lovely little house in Birmingham

we received a letter this morning saying we had to leave by may as the landlord wants the property back to sell it.

Its a strange sequence of events I won't bore you with but the timing is perfect for us. We can make a guess at the price, and I can afford that on my own (OH is just about year 2 into setting up as self employed so we don't have enough financial history for him etc so other places we were looking at we thought we'd have to wait another year to be able to buy, but this house I can do it alone and he'd be my lodger effectively)

anyway, we have a 10-15% deposit we can use, and I have a good credit rating

he has yet to send round a surveyor to get a price for the house, but, and this is where the good people of this site come in , what's the best thing for us to do?

We have loads of theoretical plans for this house, we have done since the day we moved in and if I'm honest, I'm quite excited! But I don't have any concrete idea of what's involved in buying a house, let alone one I'm already in!

Would it be attractive to the landlord to sell to us? We've never once missed a payment and have looked after it well. What would I need to do, would a mortgage company let me take it alone with my OH as a lodger (the mortgage would only be 3 times my salary so it could easily be done). How can I find out the price myself? Would it be worthwhile speaking to the landlord and seeing if we can avoid the estate agents totally?

Any help, suggestions, guidance and links to things to read would be really appreciated. I'm a great believer in if its meant to be it'll happen, but I also believe in encouraging things in my direction

wiggly

just to add also with regards to my debts (just saw my own tag line ) my debt free date is June this year. And thats totally debt free

rach29

Hi Wiggly,

Firstly, WELL DONE dealing with your debt :T

I would suggest that the first thing you do is let your landlord know you are interested, hopefully before he starts marketing through an EA.

Then I would have a look at the Sticky above re: house price information & get a good idea of what your property would be worth. Remember if the LL hasn,t gor an EA involved yet then he will be saving fees to the tune of at least 1% of thr property value so he will be a happy bunny & it leaves you a little room for negotiation

Next thing is to see a whole of market, independent Mortgage Adviser & get your mortgage agreed in principle & then make your LL an offer in the same way you would if you were offering on any property (there's plenty of advice on here)

The only difference for you may be that you are able to deal with the LL direct for all the negotiations.

GOOD LUCK.

Doozergirl

How exciting! It sounds pretty feasible reading the figures you've given us

Which part of Birmingham are you in?

I agree with rach29 (becoming a regular occurence!) that you should try to cut the EA out here and yes, your landlord should be very interested in selling to you. It is the ideal situation as there are no EA fees and they get rent right up until completion and you save on moving fees too

Use a website like https://www.nethouseprices.com to see what other properties in your street have sold for and run a search on https://www.rightmove.co.uk for similar properties within a 1/2 mile radius of your home. I avoid putting in number of bedrooms and house type as a LOT of estate agents don't seem to able to use this correctly and you miss things that might otherwise be suitable.

You can guage a rough price for the house this way, but I also suggest that you get out there and view some of those properties for comparison and, well, you never know what's out there!

wiggly

I've just tried to understand that mortgage broker thread and my head hurts! *goes for a gin*

the nethouse prices thing is great thanks, but the houses round here are all so different that I'm still not very sure what to guess the price at. Shame I don't know any EA's myself to ask them

Phirefly

Hi Wiggly

First of all, congratulations, you lucky thing. We've been trying to buy our rented house from our landlord since July last year. Initially he was not at all interested in selling but over 6 months, countless twists in the tale and many MANY sleepless nights later, he's decided to sell it regardless of whether we buy it or not.

We're currently locked in negotiations over price, literally as we speak. My OH just had two missed calls on his phone from the LL but he's had to dash out to b&q to get some wire to help my Mum break into her car (another story!!!) so I'm hopping up and down waiting for him to get home and call the LL back and find out whats going on.

If I could give one piece of advice it would be to get a REALLY accurate idea of the value of the property, pretend you own it get an EA in to value. Thats been the real sticking point for us, because of the unusual circumstances of the house not actually being on the market, its been a real brain strain. Our letting agents have promised the LL they can get silly money for the house if he sells with them, and he trusts them, so we're really up against it.

We live in a row of identical houses, and two have sold in the last 3 months, but although they were in identical condition, there was 10k difference in sold price. obviously the LL wants close to the top end of that scale and we want to pay close to the bottom.

I could go on and on about the whole saga, it would probably be relevant to you but I'll bore the pants off everyone else! Fingers crossed for you and I'd really like to hear how it pogresses. PM me if you like

leftieM

You could get an EA out to value the house - they don't need to know at this stage that you don't own it! I think you should act quickly before the house is marketed as the landlord will probably be thrilled to avoid paying for an EA and may split the savings with you.
It sounds like it's 'meant to be'. Good luck!

ajaxgeezer

Wiggly, if you want to know what it's worth you and your LL could get some agents in to value ... you don't HAVE to use them, you are just getting a quote for their work

wiggly

Many many thanks for the advice so far, we're going to wait to hear from the LL by Friday and if we haven't we'll ring our agents again (letting ones).

I've also had another rummage around on the house price sites and have another query

what's worth more? a upstairs bathroom or 3 bedrooms? I'm guessing 3 bedrooms but I'm not sure!

We have 2 bedrooms but upstairs bathroom but the houses like ours on the house price websites have 3 bedrooms and hence a downstairs bathroom

any ideas?

Doozergirl

I don't think there would be that much difference, tbh, especially if bed 3 is small.

I would say that a downstairs bathroom is more of a minus on a 3 bed than a 2 bed because it should be a family house. The 2 bed has one less bedroom, but is more convenient and, I assume you gain more downstairs living accommodation.

swampduck

As rach29 says a chat with a whole of market mortgage advisor would be a good idea. If he's any good he should be able to find one that will take account of your earnings as well as your self employed partner (even if he is only into year 2 of his Self employment.)

We recently remortgaged through an excellent broker who took us to a company that didnt insist on full sets of accounts. But whose only requirement was that my partner was actually registered with the Inland Revenue for tax and NI payments which was easily proved with correspondence we had filed and together with my earnings it was easy to prove that we could make the mortgage payments. Which at the end of the day is all any mortgage company wants to ensure!!

As for your landlord if he's saving an estate agents' fees - I would have thought there was room for negotiation on price to pay etc. Best of luck!