The Process of Buying your (first) Home

Fredula

Hubby and I are looking to buy our own place within the next 6 months.

I have no idea how to go about it. Do we just look, and then put in an offer? Would we need to book an appt with a mortgage broker before we could offer (we're going to use one, for sure) or does that happen after we've offered? When do the solicitors come into it, and does the mortgage broker deal with everything mortgage related?

Step by step process would be good if anyone would like to tell me

Thanks

browneyedbazzi

It's best to meet with the mortgage broker before you start looking at places - they'll be able to help you work out how much you can borrow/what you can afford. They should be able to arrange an agreement in principle on a mortgage for you. You can also shop around for solicitors and decide who you will use (you don't instruct them until after your offer is accepted and you want them to start work on the purchase). Having this done at the outset means you're in a better position when it comes to offering on a place - a potential buyer with all their ducks in a row is much more attractive to a seller than someone who hasn't.

Once you've got your AIP, start viewing places and when you find one you like make an offer. When your offer is accepted then you get in touch with the solicitor and instruct them....after that things sort of follow on, enquiries (the solicitor asking questions of the sellers to check they have good title of the property, checking what's included in the sale etc), searches, survey, mortgage offer, exchange etc.

Fredula

So the first thing to do is go see a broker. Do we have to get the mortgage in principle then, because I read that it can damage your credit score if it runs out and you have to apply again?

How do you find a good solicitor? Where do you find a surveryer? I have no idea on these things. I'd like to have a short list so that when the time comes I can just get the list our rather than have to research on precious valuable time.

GalaxyStar

Fredula wrote: »

So the first thing to do is go see a broker. Do we have to get the mortgage in principle then, because I read that it can damage your credit score if it runs out and you have to apply again?

How do you find a good solicitor? Where do you find a surveryer? I have no idea on these things. I'd like to have a short list so that when the time comes I can just get the list our rather than have to research on precious valuable time.

If you have a AIP then when you make an offer you are seen as a more serious buyer, some only do soft searches that don't ruin your credit score I believe but someone else may need to back that up!

Solicitors ask family and friends for recommendations, you can even try on here and see if anyone has used a good one near you - though they don't actually HAVE to be near you as everything can be done over the phone/post/email but it's handy to be able to just drop in and hand them the things they need rather than wait for the post. You can choose to get a survey done via the bank and they will do their valuation at the same time or you can let the bank do their valuation and find a local surveyor yourself to do your survey - this is what we have done. Same as solicitors ask friends and family on here for a good local one. We didn't have any recommended to us but I emailed about 8 local surveyors and went with the one that was the most helpful in their answers and gave a more comprehensive answer than some who only wrote 5 line e-mails with the price only practically.

We did it as: AIP - Offer - Accepted - Solicitor chosen and got under way - mortgage app - survey (separately from mortgage)

skyblue33

Hi,

We are in the process of buying our first home, and eventually went to a broker after looking at estimates of how much we could borrow online. I'm glad we did as it allowed us to look at homes we originally thought were out of our budget and they also gave us a much better mortgage rate than we could see on the high street. We did have a recommendation from a friend for the broker though so that obviously helped as I would have felt more nervous going to one I didn't know of otherwise.

In terms of solicitors, we were asked for our mortgage in principle and for the details of our solicitor by the estate agent before they would take it off the market after our offer had been accepted and stop viewings, and we hadn't even thought about who to use for the solicitors at that point. If we had researched this before and got recommendations/quotes etc, it would have saved me frantically searching around for this on the day our offer was accepted after we negotiated a lower asking price! I'd also say that the quotes we got from solicitors were all over the place in terms of price, so make sure you get a few.

Good luck!

Eviesmummy

If you don't know any brokers or have any recommendations its worth giving an estate agent a call. They will have a local broker that they use regularly and will recommend, or even pass your details on to. An estate agent isn't going to recommend anyone who is slow or not competent because it's in their interest to get properties sold quickly.
This is what we did and were put in touch with a lovely chap who has worked very hard for us.

browneyedbazzi

Estate agents recommend the services that they get the biggest commission from - not necessarily the best in terms of service or value. I'd personally steer well clear of their recommendations.

koneko

We actually found our broker through an online search of local brokers. This was after we'd seen one recommended by a friend who we really didn't get on with and one attached to an estate agency. Our broker is whole of market and takes a fee (£295) but not until you actually have a mortgage offer, so it really is in his best interest to find us the right mortgage and he has been great so far.

Our solicitor is the one that my Dads family have used for years, he is not local but I don't know that I would have trusted a random local one.

Our process went broker -> AIP -> viewings (about 12) -> offer (accepted after increasing our original offer by £2500) then everything stalled for several months as it took ages for our vendor to find somewhere to move to due to the market being competitive at the moment.

Now we are back on track, mortgage app is in (through broker and he is dealing with the bank) and solicitor is on the case with getting the contract from vendors solicitor. The estate agents seem to keep in touch with solicitors to see how that is going but they don't get involved with our broker.

Hope this helps.

ChaddyBouy

We found our broker on a website called unbiased. We had visited a few estate agents in house brokers who were very 'sales aggressive' - they didn't feel right for us but that's personal opinion of course. Our broker is whole of market and doesn't charge a fee. In our opinion, a good broker is one that relies on commission to earn their money. They will be experienced and confident of securing the mortgage - not to mention they will bend over backwards to ensure they earn the commission.

We got our DIP from our MB first then started looking at houses, put our first offer in yesterday. Head to head with a cash buyer - very stressful but exciting experience so far!

googler

Process differs depending on whether you're buying in E&W or Scotland.

Can you confirm which, before we go on?