First time buyer - how much money should we budget for on top of the desposit?

martinsurrey

monty-doggy wrote: »

Are you sure the sellers of your new place will wait two months after completion?? It's normally a few days! Or a couple of weeks at the very most!

... please read his post, he's going to complete and then hand notice in.

Complete as in it will be his house, I think your getting confused with exchange.

OP, by the time you get from offer to completion it will be 3 months (ish), and in that time you can save the buffer you need/want.

sounds reasoable as long as you understand you'll be broke for a while (as are most FTB).

monty-doggy

hazyjo wrote: »

Not sure what you're referring to. Stamp Duty? Doesn't go to the sellers...

Average sale/purchase takes around 12 weeks so you might save even more.

Give notice on exchange. You don't have to wait until completion. Are you saying you'd pay 2-3 months' rent (depending on when notice dates fall) and a mortgage? You could arrange 4 weeks between exchange and completion - that'll save you a month's rent in that case.

Jx

OP posted give 2 months notice on completion??? I'd have thought you'd want to move in on completion not have 2more months renting.

AFK_Matrix

You say give 2 months notice, why is this as you should have to only give 1 months notice if your on a periodic tenancy agreement?

I assume you are as if your still in your fixed period I hope you have agreed with the Landlord to end the tenancy etc.

I gave my months notices for the place I was renting on the day I exchanged contracts and then had 2 weeks till completion so I had a nice overlap of 2 weeks to move everything and do some decorating on the new house and it worked out well.

StuC75

The Seller wont care in the slightest what happens after completion.

monty-doggy wrote: »

Are you sure the sellers of your new place will wait two months after completion?? It's normally a few days! Or a couple of weeks at the very most!

japmis

Here's my FTB costings:

Home Buyers £270
Mortgage + Valuation £724
Conveyancing + searches £969
stamp duty £1,450
removals £369
white goods £300
urgent repair to gutters £750

TOTAL £4,832

Obviously you won't have the same gutter issue that I do (well, I hope not anyway!) but you should leave a little in case the survey finds anything that needs doing straight away. Remember also that builders won't take credit cards. I only needed one appliance and I put that on my 0% credit card.

My solicitor wanted my entire deposit 24 hours before exchange, then everything else including stamp duty 24 hours before completion.

I have one month where I'm paying rent and mortgage, which is going to hurt, but it was unavoidable.

Hope this helps.

stoddler

Thanks for the replies so far.

On the notice/rent issue, we hadn't considered giving notice on exchange (as opposed to completion), so that's something we can think about.

AFK_Matrix

stoddler wrote: »

Thanks for the replies so far.

On the notice/rent issue, we hadn't considered giving notice on exchange (as opposed to completion), so that's something we can think about.

You are pretty safe once exchange has happened. Things can still go wrong but they are very rare as the seller would incur stupid costs if the pulled out after exchange. It also only means a one month over lap.

Idiophreak

It's not really clear from your OP if you're after a *specific* house, or whether you're just looking generally.

TBH, if you've not seen one you think's going to be snapped up, you may as well let things ride for a month or two to make life more comfortable. That said, if you stayed put for another year you could manage 80%LTV and get a much better rate...

stoddler

Good point. It is a specific house we're hoping for. I agree that ideally we should wait to build a bit more of a reserve of cash to buy at that price - it's the risk of losing out that's made us look into whether it's feasible right away.

dotdash79

martinsurrey wrote: »

sounds reasoable as long as you understand you'll be broke for a while (as are most FTB).

Prepare to be broke for the first 6 months at least. We are only now just starting to get back on track.

Even if you have a lot of your own stuff, you will need loads of things when you move that you never thought about when you rented.