First Time Buyers

dhassen · 7 February 2008 at 10:59AM

Hi there....

Me and the gf are looking to buy our first house this year. We have a good deposit but we were wondering what kind of amounts of money will we need to pay for other things such as fees etc, basically anything that we will need the cash for upfront in order to do the deal? Can anyone give a kind of ball-park figure of the sorts of upfront cash we will need? We've got 10k (from my dad) and will probably need / want to use 8500ish as a deposit.

Badger_Lady · 7 February 2008 at 11:04AM

How much are you planning to spend on a property? This will determine most of your costs.

If it's £100k, for example:
- Stamp Duty £0 (as it's under the limit)
- Solicitors Fee £300-£800 (get some free quotes from recommended conveyencers)
- Searches £150
- Mortgage setup fee - depends on the lender, could be £0
- Survey - depends on type and lender, £0-£600
- Moving in - professional movers £200-£500 (again, get a quote or do it yourself)

dhassen · 7 February 2008 at 11:05AM

oh I should have said.... around £150k - hopefully less if we can get lower offers accepted

so this is all stuff we will need the cash for upfront??

Badger_Lady · 7 February 2008 at 11:19AM

In that case, any property over £125k will be subject to stamp duty of 1%. So, to buy a house or flat for £150k, you will need another £1,500 up front.

Everything else will be roughly the same - they do vary a lot though, so get some quotes, speak to a whole-of-market mortgage lender to get some idea of the products open to you...

It won't cost you anything to get all these quotes and will help you plan properly. It will also add weight to your offers if you have all of this in place (mortgage agreed in principle, solicitors instructed) because it shows that you're a serious, fast-moving buyer.

dhassen · 7 February 2008 at 11:23AM

so we're kind of looking at another 3k.... erg

and that doesn't include any money for anything to sit on or sleep in lol

Thanks for your posts

Badger_Lady · 7 February 2008 at 11:26AM

That's OK

It's not a cheap business, is it?

As for sitting on and sleeping in things, that doesn't have to cost:
EXPERIMENT: Can I furnish my home for free?

dhassen · 7 February 2008 at 11:45AM

not cheap at all! It's so important to have a good deposit but there's all these things that you don't know about to pay for too. We aren't very good savers either... hence all the debt in my sig

Thanks again, and thanks for the link

polegirl23 · 7 February 2008 at 1:58PM

Hi there

We are currently in the process of buying our first house, the surveys are being carried out at the moment. I just thought I'd add on here to give you an idea of the costs that we have faced.

The price of the house is £167,500 and we have put down a £25,000 deposit. The solicitors fees have totalled just over £3,000, which includes £1,675 stamp duty (£300 for surveys has been paid upfront and the rest is due on completion). We have also had to pay a £305 valuation fee upfront. The arrangement fee for our mortgage is £599 and we have a rate of 5.54% from Nat West. So in total our fees are just under £4000 and our mortgage is £142,500.

I hope that helps give a bit of an example of the costs, obviously these costs vary but I just wanted to illustrate what ours have been. The other thing you need to consider when working out how much the mortgage will cost per month is life insurance and buildings insurance. Theses are 2 extra payments that we didn't have when renting and have totalled approx £50 per month on top of the mortgage payment.

dhassen · 7 February 2008 at 2:27PM

cheers for that polegirl. Your natwest mortgage sounds like the rbs one we were looking at, I think the arrangment fee will be the same sort of price. Granted we're thinking about moving in the summer at the earliest so things will change by then, but I suppose our costs will be a bit under yours maybe around £3700. And cheers for the note about insurances, we're aware these are things we'll need on top of all the usual stuff. 25k deposit is good btw!! I assume your not a dfw lol

Thanks!

c0lc0l · 7 February 2008 at 2:35PM

Hi

Sorry to hijack the thread/take it off topic, but, you say you have a £10k deposit and in your sig you have £10k of debt on credit cards etc. Dont these cancel each other out with regards to how much you can borrow? I only ask as i am in a similar situation myself

dhassen · 19 February 2008 at 3:52PM

hi c0lc0l, sorry for a much delayed reply. Well as far as I'm aware my bank will lend the same amount regardless of my debt, and seen as I'm snowballing I'll be out of debt in a couple of years but if I had no or little deposit I / we wouldn't get the mortgage and home we want.

First Time Buyers

Comments

Confirm your email address to Create Threads and Reply

🚀 Getting Started

Categories

Is this how you want to be seen?

Get our FREE Weekly email full of deals & guides - and it’s spam-free