Which comes first...? Survey?solicitor?Mortage?

fiji_dave

Being fairly new to this house buying lark I'm starting to get myself in a bit of a muddle....

I've had an offer accepted on a house. I'm off to see the mortgage advisor on wed to sort the mortgage (i already have the agreement in principle). But I'm slightly confused.

I want to get a full structural survey done on the house I'm buying as it's a victorian terrace and I'd rather pay the extra just for the extra confidence in the property. Now, I know that the full survey will take a little longer than a homebuyers report, so, is there a recommended order for Survey - Mortgage - Solicitors? Do I get the solicitors working straight away or do i wait for the results of the survey. Do I se the mortgage people, or again, do i get the survey done first, or do I get the mortgage going, then sort survey...etc

Or, do i basically treat all three as separate entities and start them all off at the same time?

Help!.....


Dave

djm1972

Hi Dave,

There's no requirement to set them all off at the same time; but a couple of points to note;

Your mortgage lender may offer free legal fees if you use their solicitor for your conveyancing; so check this out with the advisor. If this is the case; initiate your mortgage application first, and they will then introduce you to a solicitor who may well make first contact with you.

It is also likely that your mortgage provider can also arrange for the survey to be carried out in conjunction with their evaluation; so again I think it's worth looking to sort a mortgage first and seeing how much of the rest of it they will run with for you.

However; note that being introduced to a solicitor through your lender may not always be the cheapest option despite not paying their "legal fees", so you might want to study the quote that you get and compare that against other avenues such as the online conveyancing firms; taking into account that there may be £100 or so in legal fees for your lender to pay if you do not go through them!

HTH

fiji_dave

cheers,

I'm off to see the mortgage advisor tomorrow. I got a quote from their solicitor yesterday and they do seem quite expensive but I'll find out if there are any costs which can be saved by doing everything through the mtge advisors. I'll ask if they have a recommendations for the surveyor too.

I did check out a couple of online quotes and whilst the actual fees themselves seemed to be cheaper, once the other costs were added they all seemed top be as expensive as the non-online solicitors.

By the way, can anyone recommend a surveyor in West Sussex who can carry out a full structural survey?

marybishop

If you go to the RICS website https://www.rics.org you can click on 'Find a Surveyor' and from that get names/phone numbers for ones local to you.

pingu79

We are now on our 2nd attempt at purchase after we had to pull out of the 1st (a victorian semi). We were on a 100% mortage and the mortage co would only offer 90% due to a structural issue. We had a full homebuyers done and the mortgage co requested a structural survey, so we had that done aswell, thankfully OH is a structural engineer so managed to get it free through his employer

I think the best route is get mortgage co to do their valuation and find a solicitor/surveyor in the meantime. If there ok to lend on the property, then proceed with the survey & searches. This should limit the amount you'll lose if the property turns out to be unsound.