FTB question

Ian_875

Hi.

My wife and I have recently put an offer in on a property and been accepted. We're going through a broker, and so far we have appointed a solicitor and applied for the mortgage. We've also agreed a quote for home and contents insurance.

This is all happening rather fast (we only put the offer in on Wednesday!) and we're feeling a bit out of our depth.

We have the valuation survey booked tomorrow which is provided by the mortgage lender.

I've got two questions really:

1. We want a proper survey done. When should this be arranged? Should we start arranging it now? Is this something we ask the solicitor to help with or the broker?

2. Due to finances and the need to give my landlord one months notice, I'd prefer this to rumble on for a few months. I understand that once all is done and dusted we agree a date for the contracts to be exchanged. Is there any issue with me requesting this to be in a couple of months time? For example, if they come back in a fortnight to say they're ready to proceed can we ask that the contract exchange is left until say April to allow us put notice on our rented house?

Sorry for the newbie questions, it's all a bit new to us and we feel like we're being swept along a little bit!

chunkytfg

If it was me I wouldn't be paying out anything until you have the money sorted.

If you want a survey then organise who you want to do it and speak to them about when they can do it but hold off till you have a mortgage offer. You have plenty of time to organise this.

Solicitor shouldn't conduct searches till your Mortgage is sorted as you'll have to pay for them upfront.

The Insurance quotes are very premature and will be invalid by the time you actually need it(when you exchange contracts by the way)

Dont give notice yet as you've got 2 months minimum before you will be ready to consider actually moving and more likely longer if there is a large chain.

Once you are in a position to exchange contracts then speak to your solicitor to arrange when.

Depending on how you're planning on moving your stuff it could be good to arrange an overlap so you have both the flat and house for a week to allow you to move your stuff yourself with far less stress.

Ian_875

Cheers for that.

We've got all the money required at the moment.

Re the insurance the broker has organised them saying they quotes are valid for a few months. Perhaps because they've gone via them?

Sky_

I agree with chunkytg, I wouldn't pay anything out until you have a mortgage offer in principle. Ideally you'd wait a little later, until you have your formal mortgage offer (usually sent once the lenders valuation survey is completed).



Your insurance quote may be valid for 1-2 months, but house purchases can take way longer than that. Our last one was chain free and still took 4 months from offer to exchange. We organised the insurance quote as soon as we had the exchange date---it took less than an hour to get a quote, pay for it and have the documents emailed to us.