Costs when purchasing first home

alou

Hi all!
Within the next couple of years my partner and I will be looking at purchasing our first home together. I'm creating a spreadsheet of the costs involved based on what I've read online but I was wondering if anybody would be able to share the costs involved when buying their first home? I understand it's different for everyone but I'd like to know basically how much money is needed and at what stage you pay what if that makes sense! We will be looking at buying a home worth around £165,000 - £170,000 with a deposit of 10% hopefully.
Below I've listed what I've managed to find out online with rough estimates. Unfortunately we don't know anybody that has bought a house or in the process of buying recently so it's difficult to understand the process.

Stamp Duty £0
Valuation fee £150 - £1,500
Surveyor’s fee £250 - £600
Legal fees £850 - £1,500
Electronic transfer fee £40 - £50
Booking fee £99 - £250
Arrangement fee £2000
Mortgage valuation fee £150
= £6050.00

Am I also right in thinking realistically, it's usually household income x 5 with regards to how much providers are willing to lend?
Thank you in advance.

BoiledBreadTomatoSauce

Just to add to this - when looking up mortgages online some of them talk about a "product fee", usually around the £1k mark but occasionally more or less. Anyone know what this is? Is it the same as the arrangement fee?

G_M

You've duplicated the mortgage valuation fee £150.


You've ignored all the moving costs and setting up home costs.
You need a contingency fund too.
Where are the search fees?


Use duckduckgo (or goggle if you insist) - there are lots of guides on the internet listing costs, tasks etc

Exodi

So to respond to the OP, I completed my purchase about 3 months ago. House was a 3 bedroom detached for 290,000 in South East Kent. Mortgage was for £218,499 at 75% LTV. Costs were as follows;

Stamp Duty £0 (First Time Buyer)
Surveyor’s fee £417 (For Homebuyers)
Legal fees £1056.00
Search Fees £362.83
Electronic transfer fee £0
Product fee £999
Broker fee £0 (L&C)
Mortgage valuation fee £0 (Nationwide)

You may also want to include removal costs (especially if you need a van). Please note you'll want a bit more than this for the inevitable 'oh.... the toilets leaking'.

I would generally insist that maximum affordability is assessed at 4.5x total income and not 5x.

Exodi

BoiledBreadTomatoSauce wrote: »

Just to add to this - when looking up mortgages online some of them talk about a "product fee", usually around the £1k mark but occasionally more or less. Anyone know what this is? Is it the same as the arrangement fee?

It's a charge to 'setup' that product. It could be used interchangeably with 'arrangement fee' (though if you're using a mortgage broker, they may charge a fee and also refer to this as an arrangement fee' so I think calling it a product fee is simpler).

The common way to handle arrangement fees is to add it to the mortgage. This has several benefits:

a) If you don't end up carrying on with the mortgage for any reason, you're not £1000 out of pocket.
b) Most lenders to not count this towards the LTV of your mortgage so it essentially frees up some money.
c) If you really want to pay it off, you can do so the second you move in.

bopsybunny

We spend a lot less than than £6k on the fees involved in buying our first home, which cost ~£170k

Our mortgage arrangement/valuation was free of charge
Our solicitor charged £918, which included the land registry search, bankruptcy search, land registry, legal fee, telegraphic transfer out fee, and search pack. We also paid a £15 ID check fee and £120 Help to Buy ISA claim fee on top.
Our RICS Home Buyers Report cost £330.
I can't remember exactly but I think we paid about £150 to hire a big van and did the move ourselves with the help of friends and family.
So in total about £1500 give or take a few quid.

We also had a pot set aside of about £4000 to set up home, but as we had been renting unfurnished prior to buying, we had most of our furniture already. We still haven't spent all of that 9 months in.

The only other expenses I would make sure to consider in advance are the difference between your current rent (if appropriate) and your monthly mortgage repayment, council tax rates (we moved councils and moved up 2 bands so our council tax went up quite a lot), home insurance, and life insurance/critical illness cover if you think it is necessary. We also pay more in fuel on a weekly basis because we moved further away from my work.

Good luck with your purchase!

Ian_875

As a very rough guide, these were our costs on a £110k house

Deposit £11,000.00
Solicitor £741.00
Solicitor Deposit £250.00
Stamp Duty £0.00
Survey £480.00
Broker £0.00
Estate Agent £0.00
Moving (approx) £300.00
Gas Engineer £50.00
Electrical Engineer £550

We were FTB, hence no stamp duty. We used a free broker. The moving costs ended up being £200 (they were £28 an hour and it took a fair while). The gas engineer cost was just for someone to give it the once over and give me a certificate for peace of mind. The electrical engineer cost was to replace the consumer unit which needed doing.

Once we moved in, we've spent around £10k replacing carpets, doing decorating, getting the bathroom done, getting some gardening work done etc etc, although none of these costs needed to be made as the house was livable, just very dated.

Fosterdog

alou wrote: »

Stamp Duty £0
Valuation fee £150 - £1,500
Surveyor’s fee £250 - £600
Legal fees £850 - £1,500
Electronic transfer fee £40 - £50
Booking fee £99 - £250
Arrangement fee £2000
Mortgage valuation fee £150
= £6050.00.

We were first time buyers three years ago, our house was only £65k

Stamp duty £0
Valuation fee £0 (nationwide)
Surveyor £0 (didn't get one done, we took the risk based on us knowing the houses well enough)
Legal fees £760
Transfer fee £0 (included in the legal fees)
Booking fee £0
Arrangement fee £0

Total £760
As we already banked with Nationwide we also got £250 cashback, and a further £100 cashback last year when we renewed our fixed term with them.

We had planned and saved for the fees to be £2000 and anything leftover was a bonus and went towards us getting some work done before moving in that was going to wait a while.