house-buying - remedial class
- Thread starter kea
- Start date
trashpony
Hag
oryx said:
AFAIK you've got to have a permanent job so that they can at least envisage you being able to make the mortgage repayments. If you can demonstrate a consistent level of earning for a sustained period as a temp, you may be okay but I'd think it would be treated along similar lines to being self-employed ie you need 3 years of accounts/payslips.
Cheers, good job I put desperation to buy even lower on my list of priorities than getting a permanent job!Geri said:
fairy nuff
shall i send you me bank statements too? 
edit: cheers tanky!
re: solicitors - it's looking like my mum's company are happy to do it for us, they did my sister's conveyancing a couple of years ago. they're based in manchester but we know we'd get good service cos one of the partners did my sister's!
we've now got to wait for Photo's west london flat to sell, and the current tenants have a 2-month notice period, so we're probably looking at househunting after xmas. which should give us enough time to get up to speed on all this stuff in the meantime! thanks all for the info and advice ...
I haven’t read the thread thoroughly but I haven’t seen much about surveys:
You can get two kinds of survey – Homebuyers Report, or a full structural survey. Homebuyers is about £300 or thereabouts (as I recall) and a full survey is about double that.
I’d definitely recommend getting a homebuyers survey – we withdrew our offer on a flat as a result of the survey, as it was riddled with problems. You can get the survey done through your mortgage lender or independently – it is cheaper to do it through your mortgage lender and I don’t see any real drawbacks as the report is independent.
Unless you know you are buying somewhere that needs a lot of attention, or you are super-cautious I wouldn’t bother with a structural survey. Because they can’t go round pulling up carpets or digging up the garden, I think they are actually a bit restricted with what they can do anyway.
You get lots of information in the homebuyers and if you have any doubts about anything you can always get any problems areas looked into further. The reports always seem to be quite cautious, but I’ve always phoned the surveyor afterwards for a chat about any problems and they seem to be more open on the phone – I think they are restricted by what they can commit to paper.
You can get two kinds of survey – Homebuyers Report, or a full structural survey. Homebuyers is about £300 or thereabouts (as I recall) and a full survey is about double that.
I’d definitely recommend getting a homebuyers survey – we withdrew our offer on a flat as a result of the survey, as it was riddled with problems. You can get the survey done through your mortgage lender or independently – it is cheaper to do it through your mortgage lender and I don’t see any real drawbacks as the report is independent.
Unless you know you are buying somewhere that needs a lot of attention, or you are super-cautious I wouldn’t bother with a structural survey. Because they can’t go round pulling up carpets or digging up the garden, I think they are actually a bit restricted with what they can do anyway.
You get lots of information in the homebuyers and if you have any doubts about anything you can always get any problems areas looked into further. The reports always seem to be quite cautious, but I’ve always phoned the surveyor afterwards for a chat about any problems and they seem to be more open on the phone – I think they are restricted by what they can commit to paper.
Phototropic
Active Member
kea said:fairy nuff
edit: cheers tanky!
re: solicitors - it's looking like my mum's company are happy to do it for us, they did my sister's conveyancing a couple of years ago. they're based in manchester but we know we'd get good service cos one of the partners did my sister's!
we've now got to wait for Photo's west london flat to sell, and the current tenants have a 2-month notice period, so we're probably looking at househunting after xmas. which should give us enough time to get up to speed on all this stuff in the meantime! thanks all for the info and advice ...
I'll second all that
Thanks a lot everyone This has helped a lot.cheers for that beeboo - i was wondering about the different types of survey. so if we have any queries over the homebuyers' survey then we can get the surveyor to look into those areas further? my concern is because we're likely to be looking at lower ground floor period flats, and obviously there are certain problems that could crop up with that kinda place, so i want to make sure we get enough info!
trashpony
Hag
Be warned that they err on the side of caution so some of the stuff they say can seem rather alarming at first - particularly if you're buying an old place. A certain amount of subsidence, the odd crack etc is pretty inevitable in an old building.
So make friends with them because they will quite often be able to give you an opinion on what they really mean (which they will caveat heavily but it's still useful).
A survey is also quite a useful tool for leveraging off when it comes to price negotiations too!
So make friends with them because they will quite often be able to give you an opinion on what they really mean (which they will caveat heavily but it's still useful).
A survey is also quite a useful tool for leveraging off when it comes to price negotiations too!
ok cool cheers. i've got some contacts at RICS through my job so i might leverage those if i need anything translating 
i think we might be looking at price negotiations, anywhere with those new plasticky cheap laminated floorboards will have the cost of replacing those knocked off the asking price for starters. i HATE them.
i think we might be looking at price negotiations, anywhere with those new plasticky cheap laminated floorboards will have the cost of replacing those knocked off the asking price for starters. i HATE them.
Well, in my opinion (and I've only bought one flat so it's not exactly expert!) I'd say a Homebuyers report should shed light on most of the major issues you might come up against.
Essentially, both a surveyor carrying out a Homebuyers report and a full survey will be looking at the same stuff, but it gets reported in much more detail in a full survey.
In my experience you can phone the surveyor with some questions afterwards, and I guess you could pay seperately for some more further investigation if it were needed.
However, in most cases you would get a builder/plumber/electrician or whatever was needed to come round and have a look at any problems and give you some advice and a quote on how much it would cost to fix.
The full survey is only a couple of hundred pounds more - which isn't much in the grand scheme of things, but you've got to factor in that you could end up paying for a few of them if things don't go to plan the first time.
Essentially, both a surveyor carrying out a Homebuyers report and a full survey will be looking at the same stuff, but it gets reported in much more detail in a full survey.
In my experience you can phone the surveyor with some questions afterwards, and I guess you could pay seperately for some more further investigation if it were needed.
However, in most cases you would get a builder/plumber/electrician or whatever was needed to come round and have a look at any problems and give you some advice and a quote on how much it would cost to fix.
The full survey is only a couple of hundred pounds more - which isn't much in the grand scheme of things, but you've got to factor in that you could end up paying for a few of them if things don't go to plan the first time.
kea said:
You usually only get money off if the the thing that's causing a problem affects the value of the house. Laminate floorboards are about the same price as carpets, which most people would probably replace anyway (personal taste) so I'd be surprised if any buyer would give you a discount for that. Depends how desperate they are to sell, and how many other people are interested in the property. You can't afford to be too demanding sometimes.
Geri said:
Absolutely true.
In a seller's market (and it's always a seller's market if they've got it and you want it), striking up a rapport with the sellers is invaluable.
Not that you would, but whatever you do don't walk around talking, however nicely, about what potential a place has or what you will change.....
Our house is my dream come true in a lot of ways, but it has loads of crappy bits too. There was a bit of a bidding war at the end because it was priced amazing low for what it is, and the sellers chose us because they said they could tell how much we loved the house, and as their late father had built it that meant a lot to them, and they said we were the only people who just talked about what we loved, and didn't point out the faults.
It may be that there will be genuine issues that come up in the survey or whatever that merit a price reduction, but leave those conversations to your solicitors. People are very attached to their houses and they really don't need to know that the thing that they spent a summer lovingly creating will be the very first thing that you rip out when you get the keys.
(conversely, the last house I sold had an "interesting" bedroom - my ex-stepdaughters room, which she loved. One of the potential buyers was very rude about it and I decided there and then that I wouldn't sell to her if my life depended on it).
I think you'll find that when you get any survey it is likely to worry you and make you wonder why you want to have that particular house, they are full of "it may be" and "this might" and in each case you are then generally recommended to get an expert opinion.
Trees are a very 'popular' thing for surveyors to pick up on and if there's one close to the house you'd like to buy you'll probably get really worried about what the survey says "could" or "might" happen if it stays there. Thing is that there's likely to be as much trouble if you remove a tree, so you would need somebody without a financial interest in the outcome to check it out for you! (local council tree officer for example)
Kea, if you know somebody who's an experienced surveyor it might be worth asking them if they'd be willing to do any survey for you. Lenders do tend to have in house surveyors, they charge for the survey, all you'd need to do is check that a friend of yours (or their firm) is acceptable to the lender.
People tend to want to move in/out of a property before or just after the main holiday times (Christmas/Easter/summer) so more properties come onto the market in September/October and so on. It'll take you around 8 weeks to complete a purchase so you'd need to look at least that far ahead of any tenancy finishing and tie it in with the estimated completion date on any sale you have to do. An estate agent is likely to be able to advise you the best time-scale.
Good luck.
Trees are a very 'popular' thing for surveyors to pick up on and if there's one close to the house you'd like to buy you'll probably get really worried about what the survey says "could" or "might" happen if it stays there. Thing is that there's likely to be as much trouble if you remove a tree, so you would need somebody without a financial interest in the outcome to check it out for you! (local council tree officer for example)
Kea, if you know somebody who's an experienced surveyor it might be worth asking them if they'd be willing to do any survey for you. Lenders do tend to have in house surveyors, they charge for the survey, all you'd need to do is check that a friend of yours (or their firm) is acceptable to the lender.
People tend to want to move in/out of a property before or just after the main holiday times (Christmas/Easter/summer) so more properties come onto the market in September/October and so on. It'll take you around 8 weeks to complete a purchase so you'd need to look at least that far ahead of any tenancy finishing and tie it in with the estimated completion date on any sale you have to do. An estate agent is likely to be able to advise you the best time-scale.
Good luck.
