Mortgage process

Becca_beccs1997

I am looking to buy a house with a mortgage and have £19,000 in savings. Preferably would like to buy a 3 bed house under £100,000 but know that not many come by in my area at this price and willing to pay more with a 10% deposit. However me and my partner have credit scores in the 100s (ClearScore) so may need wait a few years for this to improve. I am just looking to know of what exactly the mortgage process is an an estimate of additional fees, we also don’t have our own furniture so what can we do to increase the mortgage so we could have money to decorate and buy furniture in case we don’t have much savings left to do these things. I would also like to add we would like to pay some of our debt of with these savings.

haras_n0sirrah

Ideally you are looking at a 15% deposit plus about 2k for purchase costs. While 10% is available they are few and far between 

Becca_beccs1997

In terms of purchasing furniture and wanting to decorate the house, what can I apply for on top of the mortgage? I suspect £19,000 isn’t going to be enough left over to do this.

Thrugelmir

As far as furniture goes there's no need to spend vast amounts of money. Hunt around and you'll find plenty on offer either free or for very little money. 

Becca_beccs1997

Thrugelmir said:

As far as furniture goes there's no need to spend vast amounts of money. Hunt around and you'll find plenty on offer either free or for very little money. 

We will need quite a bit, bed, sofa, tv washing machine, cooker and fridge

bekabyx

I'll break down my (FTB) extra fees for you so you can get an idea of what the extras look like. We're not finished yet, so I may accidentally miss something, but this is just a rough idea. This doesn't cover furniture and such as we already have most of of our own.
As mentioned earlier in the thread, around £2000 in the bank extra to your deposit should be enough to cover everything.
Solicitor (my cost: £1000)
You should expect to spend at least £1000 for your solicitor. Ask around for recommendations from friends and family. If you need additional specialist searches (such as mining) you might pay a little more. My solicitor takes £150 upfront and the rest on completion (or not at all if it falls through).
Stamp Duty (my cost: £0)
Honestly, I'm not sure what the rules are on this because I'm not paying it. Before you're ready to buy, put in some research to see whether this will apply to you. Based on your OP it sounds like it won't unless the rules change.
Mortgage Broker (my cost: £0)
Some brokers won't charge you a fee, but some will. I've read that you should expect to spend around £350 if you're using a broker with fees, but I might be wrong on that as we're not using one with a cost. You don't have to use one at all, but they have been immensely helpful for us and in my experience I would recommend it for a FTB. Unfortunately I don't know if this fee is upfront or on completion. 
Homebuyers insurance (my cost: £50)
You don't need this, I'm just a very nervous person. This is an upfront cost.
Survey (my cost: £275)
We got a good deal on the survey (Homebuyer's Report) through our lender so our cost was quite low. If you're sourcing your own, I believe it costs somewhere around £300-£400 for a Homebuyer's Report, and a full structural survey is much higher. This is an upfront cost.
Survey follow-ups (my cost: £60)
This heavily depends on the results of your survey but our case was very straightforward. The only thing we needed to do was arrange a gas safety check because surveyors cannot do this themselves. This is an upfront cost.
Product fees (my cost: £0)
Some mortgages (usually ones with better rates in your LTV bracket) have an upfront product fee. For us, this would've been around £999 if we'd opted for that product, but it was more economical for us to take the slightly worse rate over 2 years. Make sure you run the numbers and speak to your broker (if you're using one) to see what's best for you when choosing a product. This would be an upfront cost.
Removals (my cost: £0)
If you want somebody to pack up all your stuff, it's going to cost you a lot of money. In your OP, it sounds like you don't have a lot of stuff that would need moving, so this is probably not a concern for you. If your circumstances change in that regard, you'll probably want to budget at least £450 if it's a local move. We've decided to handle it ourselves as we're moving long distance, so no cost.
AOB (my cost: ?)
We're not ready for this yet, but remember there may be costs associated with changing your utilities such as Wi-Fi and electric, especially if you're on fixed term utilities contracts.
Bear in mind also that moving is stressful and takes longer than you think, you might also want to budget for a few takeouts around moving time
Total (so far): £1385

monetxchange

If your credit scores are low, it indicates there's something bad showing up on your credit histories. That's the main thing to focus on getting rid of. If there are recent defaults etc, lenders aren't exactly going to be lining up to offer you good rates plus extra to spend on decorating costs. The best thing you could do for yourselves is save loads to cover a much higher deposit, all the moving fees plus the decoration etc when you do move. Get all issues on the credit file resolved/at least easy to explain when you do approach lenders. I know it's probably not what you want to hear, but it really is much better to take on a house when you can afford it, including everything, instead of snowing yourselves under from the start. Mortgage lending is extremely hard at the moment and you want to make yourself look as good as possible.

PS. I'm self employed so not a straight forward case for a broker, and they're charging £499. £1200 for solicitor (so far). £2500 upfront for service charge and ground rent for a year. It's not a cheap process by any means! I'll have a few grand leftover to do as best I can with furniture and then make do until I can save up for the rest.