Costs associated with a new build purchase

dhokes

I'm a FTB looking to purchase a new build with the HtB Equity Loan and ISA in the next couple of months and I'm crunching the numbers to check my affordability.

I'm looking a 2 bedroom houses in Leicestershire and I was wondering what costs I should consider for a house selling for approximately £160,000 (excluding furniture)?

Do the following figures sound reasonable?

- Stamp duty: £700
- Valuation fee: £400
- Surveyor's fee: £400
- Legal fees: £1000
- Electronic transfer fee: £50
- Snagging survey: ??
- Mortgage arrangement fee: £2000

- Building insurance: ??
- Council tax: ??

XKC-Me

For stamp duty you can work it out precisely in advance using a handy online tool. £700 would indeed be the SDLT for a £160k house.

Lots of solicitors do fixed fees for conveyancing at around £500-£600 (plus VAT), though remember that won't cover the legal searches for roughly £300-£400 more.

Survey? £500 for a homebuyers survey (not the most detailed, not just a valuation) is my experience - though others may have found different.

Council Tax varies so much on where in the country you are looking.

Insurance for (say) £250k cover I'd expect something around £300-£350.

https://www.tax.service.gov.uk/calculate-stamp-duty-land-tax/#/intro

pinkfluffybabe

Land registry costs (about £200).
Factoring fees (annual or quarterly) if you need to contribute to upkeep of shared grass areas/ roads on the estate.
Your solicitor can charge you £50 to draw on your HTB ISA.

The sales team will have council tax costs when you view the show home.

The cost of any 'extras' for the new build. Builders vary massively in what they provide so you may need to pay for white goods, carpets, upgrades, turf etc.

Snagging surveys seem to be about £400 from what I've seen.

dgtazzman

dhokes wrote: »

- Stamp duty: £700
- Valuation fee: £400
- Surveyor's fee: £400
- Legal fees: £1000
- Electronic transfer fee: £50
- Snagging survey: ??
- Mortgage arrangement fee: £2000
- Building insurance: ??
- Council tax: ??

- Stamp duty: correct as per the HMRC calculator.
- Valuation fee: free with quite a few lenders, otherwise varies.
- Surveyor's fee: not required, it's a newbuild, what are they going to survey? Just have your solicitor do a full package of searches.
- Legal fees: correct ballpark, but I'd calculate a few 100 pounds more with all the search fees and other bits and bobs included. Quite a few solicitors charge a little extra for HTB purchases too. Probably will total in the £1200-1500 region.
- Electronic transfer fee: included in the legal fees above.
- Snagging survey: £300 - £500 depending on size of the place and company used.
- Mortgage arrangement fee: £0 - £2000 depending on the lender and the product chosen. I calculated it wasn't worth going for the products with the higher arrangement fees, just for a little lower interest rate. On quite a few products I found paying the higher rate over the term on the mortgage actually amounted to the same or even a lower amount that the arrangement fees on the other products.
- Building insurance: Depends on what cover you want, use gocompare or similar to get some quotes. £200 - £300 a year should get you quite far.
- Council tax: https://www.leicester.gov.uk/media/178878/council-tax-financial-information-2016-17.pdf. Valuation is based on 1991 value, would expect a 2-bed to fall in C or D band.

One thing you forgot:

- Mortgage broker/adviser: Free to a couple of hundred pounds, but generally worth the investment, especially as you intend to use HTB.

Ftba.d

Hi,

At very early stages myself and mortgage application just been submitted but these are the costs I'm expecting / have paid so far :

Stamp duty : £9,750
Reservation fee for plot : £500
Valuation fee : £525
Solicitor fees:£1250
Service charge for apartment block: £118 pcm
Mortgage arrangement fee:£995

Like I said , the full mortgage app has just been submitted so it may all be in vain but fingers crossed .

Also, just because it is a new build don't be fooled by their assertion that they can't come down in price. I managed to knock 10k off the one I'm hoping to own.

dgtazzman

That stamp duty means you are buying for £395k, meaning 10k off is relatively speaking not even going to register with the developer... Completely different ballpark from OP.

And if we're comparing size, I got 11k knocked off my 200k newbuild I'm buying, as well as upgraded kitchen appliances, tiling and vanity units in the wet rooms, plus legal fees and stamp duty paid because they went over the long-stop date and I threatened to pull out. 16 days till legal completion, tick tock

Ftba.d

Well done, that's good . You sound very impressed with what you achieved. Bit perplexed by the whole 'comparing size ' approach to your post , but like I said , well done .

Polaris49

Life insurance is needed for some mortgages and possibly your site might have management fees which are standard in most new build sites?

Jon_B_2

Ftba.d wrote: »

Well done, that's good . You sound very impressed with what you achieved. Bit perplexed by the whole 'comparing size ' approach to your post , but like I said , well done .

Can't beat a bit of virtual willy waving...

dgtazzman

Just putting things into perspective, I'm not the one that 'whipped it out'. I actually took the time to give the OP useful information in my first answer, be it information he could have mostly found himself with a 30 minute google session. That's more than somebody else did with figures amounting to comparing apples to oranges.

Also, somebody above said the sales team will have the council tax banding available. This is quite often not the case, as the council will not assign a band till after somebody registers the property for council tax and as post on here have shown, they can be rather arbitrary with this.

The sales team will of course probably be able to give a fairly educated guesstimate. Took the council 6 months to assign a bad to my previous newbuild, though you can set up an account and start making payments for an amount of your choice in the meantime, so you don't end up with a sudden massive bill when a band does finally get assigned.

Some builders also require a contribution to their legal fees, which they seem to pass along as 'contribution to contract costs' or similar. It mostly seems to get squirreled away among the legal fees of your solicitor. Previous builder, Keepmoat, charged me 50 quid for this. Current builder, small local developer, is charging 200.