Buying First House-What Happens Now?!

MentalMinnie

I didn't realise you could do soft searches on mortgages. We've gone with the Leeds building society.

Hoping it goes through quickly, we'll be seriously suck come 5th May! The vendor really wants out ASAP as well though.

I guess for the most part it's the solicitors that hold things up then?

Paulaviki

We rent and are trying to buy. Our contract runs out 29th April but we've agreed with our landlord to stay and we can then give a month's notice when we are ready to leave. I'm happy to overlap with our houses as we can then take our time to leave and have time to decorate our new house and clean up our rental.

We are waiting to hear if an offer we've put on a house has been accepted and it would be awesome if it all went well and was sorted by the end of April but I know it could take months so I'm glad we aren't in a rush!

kingstreet

Offer agreed
Solicitors instructed
Sales memorandum issued by agent
Purchaser applies for mortgage
Vendor's solicitor prepares and issues draft contract
Vendor completes seller's enquiry forms and returns to solicitor
Valuation/survey carried out
Purchaser pays solicitor for searches
Searches requested
Renegotiation of price due to survey findings - if required
Mortgage offer issued
Purchaser's solicitor receives seller's enquiry forms and raises any enquiries
Searches returned
Responses to enquiries
Purchaser visits solicitor to go through paperwork, hand over ID and deposit
Completion date agreed between all parties
Contracts exchanged
Completion takes place.

Soot2006

For us it was just under 6 weeks from offer to completion. No chain and no problems with searches, survey or valuation. Our solicitor was local, highly recommended and very efficient. We used the EA in-house mortgage broker for better or for worse and once the survey was done everything else was finalised very quickly.

We were not in a rush, but everything fell into place so it was all thankfully painless!

(ETA: We had 10 days overlap with completion and end of rental which turned out to be good as we decided to change all the CH pipework when we had the boiler changed. We knew about the boiler in advance but it was only once I owned the house that I walked around it and realised I did not like the placement of the pipes one little bit. So glad we had it done!)

KatieDee

For those in the know, is it normal for searches to come back and no enquiries raised? What I mean to say is...will there always be enquiries to be raised by your solicitor? And how long does the average enquiry take to deal with (providing it's not stupidly complicated).

Sorry to hijack your thread OP, I think my question is more relative to your thread and don't think it's complicated enough for its own :-)

drdpj

The first house I bought there were no further enquiries raised... Searches/Property Information Questionnaire answered everything satisfactorily.

Kynthia

Leasehold properties take longer than freehold generally. Chains also add to the length. However even then things take time, and the solicitor may seem to be slow but they are purely looking after your and your lender's interests. My chain free purchase would have taken 10 weeks, but christmas and New Year added two, and then right when we were ready to exchange the seller waited another week to sign their contract and then insisted on four weeks to sort things out!!! This was after pushing us for a fast sale throughout, but it's now 16 weeks. So whatever you do don't give notice where you are until you've exchanged.

Chez87

We are first time buyers too. We had our offer accepted on January 16th, and things have run pretty smoothly. We should be exchanging contracts today or tomorrow and hopefully completing on the 28th. So it can move quickly if everyone pulls their finger out and there are no complications.

MentalMinnie

So the full application is going in today. Does anyone know when we will get the list from the vendors regarding what's being left when they leave i.e. Carpets, curtains? Also, is it ok to request a visit soonish to measure up?

^!£$&

Din85 wrote: »

Depends who the lender is ref the credit checks, we went to Natwest, they did a hard search on initial appointment, then declined us as i had not been with my current employer long enough (that wasted a couple of weeks) then we went through a broker and the Halifax, we has a soft search at DIP, then once the application was submitted in full we have had a fair few more soft searches (quotations and unrecorded enquirers).

We were cautious as we had had one decline, and did not instruct the solicitors until we had a mortgage offer (another few wasted weeks).

Since then its been the seller and their solicitors holding things up, which is no real issue to me as im contracted in rental until the end of April lol.

Lots of reasons things are not always straight forward as we have found out.

May I ask how long was not long enough with employer- we are in a similar situation with OH job and we wanted to go with natwest thanks xx