Buying a house under probate - deceased has left it to charity.

lea2012

Thank you very much for your replies, I think the key message I am getting is that its a little early for the solicitor to be accepting low offers so we need to either increase our offers or bide our time.

I know there is at least one other interested party but we have been advised that they are in a chain and are unable to make any bids, where as we are chain free and all set to go!

In terms of the kitchen I imagine there will be a cooker point in there somewhere as there will have been a cooker in at some point. The previous owner did need a lot of assistance in their later life and i think that they removed the cooker to give them more space to move around. You could probably fit a small free standing cooker in the kitchen, however you would not be able to turn full circle without banging into something! In terms of units the kitchen does have two pantries so this is where they stored the food etc. We have another meeting with our mortgage advisor today so will double check this with him but can't really see it being a problem.

Dukesy

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

Since you need a mortgage, then I think it would be wise to clarify with your mortgage provider exactly what they mean by insisting that there must be a kitchen in place for the house to be mortgageable.

Would they accept that about the only thing that shows that the room is a kitchen is that its got a sink unit in it or would they expect to at least have a few units and a specific cooker point in it? My feeling would be that they would require the cooker point and a couple of kitchen units (even if only old-fashioned and tatty) and a bit of work surface space.

There is no point in proceeding much further on this house until you get that clarification of their definition of a kitchen in writing.

Definitely something to clarify. When we bought our place, we were planning to strip every room and carry out major building work. Nevertheless, the place had to be 'habitable' at the time of purchase.

Our 'kitchen' had electricity and a sink with a cupboard unit underneath. That was all there was in there - no other units, no drawers, no worktop etc. Bar one, EVERY high street lender we went to said straight away, from nothing more than the particulars, that they would not even entertain the idea of lending on the place, due to the kitchen (there were other factors as well, as the place was dire, but the kitchen was the absolute decider). The only exception was Halifax, who we ended up going with.

lea2012

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

Since you need a mortgage, then I think it would be wise to clarify with your mortgage provider exactly what they mean by insisting that there must be a kitchen in place for the house to be mortgageable.

Would they accept that about the only thing that shows that the room is a kitchen is that its got a sink unit in it or would they expect to at least have a few units and a specific cooker point in it? My feeling would be that they would require the cooker point and a couple of kitchen units (even if only old-fashioned and tatty) and a bit of work surface space.

There is no point in proceeding much further on this house until you get that clarification of their definition of a kitchen in writing.

Thank you for your reply, at no point have our mortgage provider insisted this. A previous poster had mentioned the fact that i said there was no kitchen as such but the mortgage provider has not stipulated anything about it. As I say there is a kitchen its just not a modern day kitchen, the sink is within a unit (2 cupboards underneath) and there is also a drop down breakfast table with 2 shallow cupboards above it (almost like a bathroom cabinet size). There is flooring, electric and water too. In theory you could use the kitchen that is there but its extremely small and with no worktops or adequate room for a cooker etc it would not be practical.

cattie

My current home, which I completed on in August was an executor sale, though left to relatives and not charity as in your case.

A solicitor was co executor, along with a relative of the deceased & I found him to be very hard nosed when it came to trying to negotiate a price.

He just wouldn't budge on what he felt was the lowest price he'd be prepared to see the sale realize, even though the place was very dated & certain belongings were being left in the flat which were going to have to be disposed of by the new owner. I think the beneficiaries themselves would have been willing to accept a lower price due to to dated condition of the place as it had been on the market for a while due to one failed sale, but this solicitor just flatly refused to agree to what I felt was a pretty fair price with my 1st offer.

I ended up upping my offer as I really wanted the place, being in a sought after development where not many properties come up for sale & I was lucky as the ea, who I've dealt with a few times in the past with sales & purchases, told me what figure he would be happy to accept when I made my 2nd offer via her & it turned out to be a couple of £k higher than the price she knew he would be willing to accept. Of course my offer was quickly adjusted down to said figure and deal was done.

Cissi

cattie wrote: »

I ended up upping my offer as I really wanted the place, being in a sought after development where not many properties come up for sale & I was lucky as the ea, who I've dealt with a few times in the past with sales & purchases, told me what figure he would be happy to accept when I made my 2nd offer via her & it turned out to be a couple of £k higher than the price she knew he would be willing to accept. Of course my offer was quickly adjusted down to said figure and deal was done.

Wow - that's a really dodgy EA :eek: Obviously worked out well for you, but she was supposed to work for the seller (no matter who that was or whether she liked you) and her job was to secure the highest price possible. I'd be LIVID if an EA that I employed negotiated an offer down! Make sure never to hire her if you ever sell a house...