Selling flat to move to a house...

mattcafc

My partner bought a 25% share in a 200k flat 5 years ago.

We now want to move to a house, using the help to buy scheme. We can get a 280k mortgage but don't have a deposit so this works for us.

Anyway, the question is, do we list the flat and sell that before looking for somewhere to move?
We've been looking and actually found a place we really like, but haven't even began the process of listing the flat.

Should we have a sale in place before we look?

mrginge

How is htb going to help you if you don't have a deposit?

mattcafc

You only need a 4% deposit with htb, which is easy enough for us to get

mrginge

Well why say you don't have one then?

Have you got 10k for fees too?

Building_Surveyor

if your talking shared ownership then yes i would get your place on the market first. Sometimes they can take a while to sell as they are normally marketed through the HA via your local home-buy agent.

280k purchase as someone mentioned, don't forget the money for fees and stamp duty too.

mattcafc

Stamp duty etc will all be covered. Doing htb helps us buy a 300k house without 30k for deposit, we can do it with only 11k deposit.

I do think selling a shared ownership will take some time which is unfortunate

hazyjo

If you're planning on borrowing the deposit (off people or bank, credit card, etc), you will have to declare that and probably won't get the mortgage. If it's gifted, that's different.

Just saying, as you said you didn't have it, but could get it...

Not sure the lender will look favourably on giving a £280k mortgage when you've not managed to save anything towards a deposit (presumably, going by your second para)...

Jx

mattcafc

Sorry, I wasn't very clear in the op.

We have money saved that could pay for a 4% deposit (As required by HTB) which is 11k for a 290k place we are looking at.

We don't however have the 30k deposit needed if we were to purchase outright without the htb.

Yes we also have money for fee's etc. We can easily save around £1,200 a month at the moment.

We have already been told we can get a mortgage of 260-270k.

The problem is, if we really like this place, we won't be able to purchase it as we haven't even listed our current flat, and by the time it sells this new build will probably be sold!

hazyjo

If you can't buy without selling the flat, then don't offer on anything as you're not proceedable.

Many reasons why it's not advisable (some: you leave yourself less negotiating room on the sale of the flat, you make the property more appealing to others (everyone wants what appears desirable/popular), they won't reduce the price if there's an offer sitting there, if it takes 6 months to sell and the house is still up for sale too, you'd probably go in with a different offer, etc).

Unless the developers can help with part-exchange or whatever... or unless you can buy without selling first.

Don't consider a bridging loan!

Jx

Building_Surveyor

4% deposit required? where did you get that info from? i thought the minimum you had to put down for help to buy was 5%??