Trying to buy 2nd home - silly questions!

Noctu

We've seen a house down our road that we like, and we've decided we're going to either buy that one or do up or own house a bit. To clarify - I live with my partner who owns this house soley, and he will be buying the new house soley.

OH isn't too sure of the answers to these questions and I have no clue, having never bought/sold a house before... so here goes:

1. The house we're interested in has been on the market about 6 months, therefore was put on the market before the HIPS packs became compulsory (it's 3 bedrooms). It has no survey done on it either. How do we go about getting a survey? Is there any chance we could try and get the estate agents to do one (we're planning to sell our property with them if our offer is accepted so that might sweeten the deal I guess)? How much are we looking at? The reason we really need one is because the garden was flooded earlier in the year in the recent flooding... (although we're fully confident this hasn't affected the house itself as it is considerably higher than the bottom of the garden).

2. (told you I was really new at this...) If we offer them the asking price and they accept, is there any way of getting them to keep their promise of selling to us (obviously within a decent time frame) or is this just not the done thing? We do not want to find a buyer for our current house only to find that the house we wanted to move into is gone... also, if this happens, do we have the right to delay our buyer from moving in and leaving us homeless?

3. Is there such thing as a ballpark figure for solicitors fees, or is it "how long is a piece of string" kinda thing?


Thanks to anyone who can help, I feel a bit embarrassed asking these questions but it seems that every time you've heard of a house getting bought/sold, everything seems to have been done in a different order!

Rachel.

Biggie

1) No Estate agents have no resposibilty to do a survey, they just advertise properties. You could ask the seller to provide you with a hips & survery but that's entirly up to them. Generally buyers do their own survey though your mortgage provider but that should be done after the offer is accepted.

2) If it's been on the market for 6 months, then why offer asking price surly there's room for negociation espcially as it's a buyers market in certain parts of the country. Try and find out their situation they may be desperate to sell. The seller is only obliged to sell after contacts have been signed you can however get him to take it of the market reducing the risk of a counter offer. Also your offer may not be taken seriously if you have no offer on your own property.

3) Solicitor fees depends on area and value of home expect around £500-£1200 then also the following fees

stamp duty, valuation survey fees, searches

boyse7en

Your mortgage company will want (and charge you for) a survey, but it will only be a valuation survey so that they can stisfy themselves that, if they reposess the property, they are likely to get their money back.

It will not be a full survey, which is something you might want to get done to satisfy yourself that the property isn't likely to collapse in the near future.

The estate agent will not do either of these. The mortgage co. will specify who you must use for their survey, but if you choose to have a full survey done as well you can pick whomever you like to do it.

carpetbelly

I'd personally decide what you want to do first. If you want to buy another property and need to sell yours first, I'd get yours on the market asap before thinking about even putting an offer in somewhere, but that's just me.

I mean, if they've had their house on the market for 6months, who's to say your house (if a similar area which I'd assume it is as you've talked about using the same estate agent to sell yours that you've seen this one in) wouldnt take a similar period of time to sell and would go for what you expect it to?

Evee2000

In this situation there is no requirement for you to have a HIP commissioned (unless of course you would like one! ). If you are worried about potential damage to the property from flooding I would certainly consider either a Home Condition Report or a Homebuyers Survey - looking at about £350 - £500 depending on the inspector used - these will be thorough and will condition score the property - but it will not give you full structural detail. A full structural survey may cost iro £750 - £1000 depending on the size of the property.
To find a RICS surveyor in your area go to www.rics.org.uk alternatively, for a home inspector in your area you could try www.hcrregister.com

Good luck!

PasturesNew

Noctu wrote: »

2. If we offer them the asking price and they accept, is there any way of getting them to keep their promise of selling to us (obviously within a decent time frame) or is this just not the done thing? We do not want to find a buyer for our current house only to find that the house we wanted to move into is gone... also, if this happens, do we have the right to delay our buyer from moving in and leaving us homeless?

Is yours on the market already? You can't make them wait. That would be unreasonable. But you aren't really in a position to start buying their house until you have got a buyer. So you can tell them you're interested and negotiate a potential figure, but you can't go offering them money then expecting them to wait while you put yours on the market/find a buyer. It just doesn't work like that.

You have to put your house on the market, get yourself a buyer, THEN you are considered a buyer and the chain starts. So, what if you offered a price, they accepted, then yours didn't sell and you had to drop yours £20k? How would you feel then about going back to them and offering them less because you didn't get as much for yours as you thought?

Get a buyer for yours first. Then make your offer to them.

Noctu

Thank you very much for all your replies. The valuer is coming this afternoon for this house.. depending on their reply, we'll be putting this house on the market and expressing a definite interest in the house we've seen. Hopefully we'll find a buyer soon - the house is on the same street as our current house, but is completely different.. current house is a 2 bed terrace (great first time buyer house) and the one we're interested in is a semi detatched, 3 bedrooms, big garden and a garage. It's about half the age of this house - looks as if they've built it on the end of the existing row of terraces.
The terraced houses in our street tend to sell quite well so here's hoping.

carpetbelly

Good luck with it then if that's the way you decide to go