House buying is the worst

[Cube]

I've just receive word from out financial advisors that we have been provisionally approved for a 95% mortgage (subject to change in circumstances). By the time our ISA is available to us in August, we will have saved enough money for a 5% deposit for the "max" amount suggested. The monthly payment will be more than the rent or the flat, but also quite a bit less than what we've been paying for rent + what we've been putting into our ISAs, so we know we can afford it. 

 

So the hunt will start properly shortly. I'm excited and scared. 

[nightwolf]

Mortgage application submitted. We will find out the next steps by next week. 

Eep. 

[Raining_again]

55 minutes ago, nightwolf said:

Mortgage application submitted. We will find out the next steps by next week. 

Eep. 

EeeeEEEeeeekkk

am crossing my fingers for you, by gawd you need some positive shit thrown your way x

[Jimbob]

Mortgage approved on Friday, had the survey report back on checking the property for any issues also on Friday.  Rated from Green, Amber to Red.  Green being ok, red being "Needs fixing now".  Had a couple of red, down to electrics, gas and boiler.  A deeper search was because they couldn't find or had access to the latest inspection documents so had no idea if they were ok.

Have let the solicitor know, so hopefully the issues are resolved before we hand over monies

Update

The vendor has found the documentation for the gas and boiler, however none for the electricity.  They have agreed after we asked (no legal obligation to do so) to get in an electrician to do the checks.  So that's one less cost to worry about, which is good news for us.

Edited June 22, 2021 by Jimbob

[Cube]

The housing market is so ruthless at the moment. A house went up on Saturday, I sent an email this morning to arrange a viewing.

House was already sold. 

 

To be fair, we didn't understand why this house was priced so low, so we're expecting it to go before we can put an offer in.

[Cube]

So it looks like prices around here are "normalising" a bit, a few more properties similar to the one we thought was too high have popped up for the same price. We viewed one and it was lovely. We're waiting on the final details from the finance advisors. 

[Cube]

After an experience with one local lettings company, who tried to push us into getting a mortgage with them (without mentioning fees except a footnote in an email after chatting on the phone) before allowing a viewing, we're waiting for our finance advisor to finalise our mortgage so we have a bit of paper saying we are able to buy. I feel like this is better (and less stressful for us both) then putting offers on (which our finance advisor said we could do, as everything should be finalised before it's needed). 

We did have a viewing booked for tomorrow, but we have no idea if it's still happening due to this. We asked if we could pass their details on to out finance advisor to contact them, but didn't hear back. 

Also their pitch was very suspicious: apparently they can get is the agreement in principal in a couple of hours (even though there's no way for me to even provide them the details they need in that time), and it will definitely happen and that having a default is "totally not an issue" (there's extremely few people willing to give us the 5% deposit due to my credit history, the finance advisors have found us one but are doing a final check with out latest details to see if they can get us a better rate). 

[Jimbob]

Getting the keys for the new house on Friday, were meant to get them 2 weeks ago but the owners daughter asked for a bit longer as they needed to clear out.  Been packing over the weekend, the landlord wants us out by months end.  Have put in notices to swap our gas/electric across and the internet as i'm still home working for a while yet.  Making use of friends and family over the next weekend to move stuff from the flat, and got a van coming on Monday to take the bulky goods.

[Raining_again]

On 17/07/2021 at 8:23 PM, Cube said:

After an experience with one local lettings company, who tried to push us into getting a mortgage with them (without mentioning fees except a footnote in an email after chatting on the phone) before allowing a viewing, we're waiting for our finance advisor to finalise our mortgage so we have a bit of paper saying we are able to buy. I feel like this is better (and less stressful for us both) then putting offers on (which our finance advisor said we could do, as everything should be finalised before it's needed). 

We did have a viewing booked for tomorrow, but we have no idea if it's still happening due to this. We asked if we could pass their details on to out finance advisor to contact them, but didn't hear back. 

Also their pitch was very suspicious: apparently they can get is the agreement in principal in a couple of hours (even though there's no way for me to even provide them the details they need in that time), and it will definitely happen and that having a default is "totally not an issue" (there's extremely few people willing to give us the 5% deposit due to my credit history, the finance advisors have found us one but are doing a final check with out latest details to see if they can get us a better rate). 

A mortgage in principle is just an outline of what you could potentially spend based on your collective earnings, not legally binding for either you or the bank.  You dont need to supply documents that im aware of.  I got one with my bank and it took 5 minutes online and i got an instant "decision"

None of the estate agents i ever communicated with ever asked for it, even when i got into a bidding war with someone else.  

[Cube]

I'm guessing it was more to try and push us into getting one with them. Our finance advisor said we would be OK bidding for houses, and that it isn't fully needed at this point. Definitely put us off using them.

[Raining_again]

2 hours ago, Cube said:

I'm guessing it was more to try and push us into getting one with them. Our finance advisor said we would be OK bidding for houses, and that it isn't fully needed at this point. Definitely put us off using them.

admittedly it does sound like bully tactic marketing ploy!  I remember reading in a lot of articles that it was a good idea but not compulsory.  i ended up going over my original budget on the place i got now.  They didnt ask for an MIP at any stage.

[Cube]

Had a pit of a panic last night, as the finance advisors said that upon revaluating our details, only one mortgage company would even consider it, but that chances weren't amazing for being accepted, and that we may have to consider a lower amount or paying up to 20% of the mortgage (instead of the 5% we can afford). 

Luckily...we've been accepted (in principle)! He's also found some other options who can go slightly higher (by £500ish, not much at all in terms of a mortgage really), but that the monthly cost will be a lot higher due to much higher interest rates, so it's probably best to stick with the current one.

[nightwolf]

I've actually had so much going on in this house buying process, that I couldn't physically bring myself to talk about it until today.

Ho boy, buckle up kids, it gets weird. 

So last time I posted, we spoke about our mortgage application being submitted, that was June 14th, the reality is that it had been submitted on June 6th, I just hadn't spoken about it on here until almost a week later. From there, with my broker (and her colleague looking after the process) it was safe to say at the time that the mortgage would be fairly standard. My employment history was sound, my partner's a little less so with working through an agency but he had 12 months solid employment through them and had always worked for a company prior too that. Most lenders want you to have 12 months solid employment if you're with an agency apparently ./shrug

Good lord, we were so so wrong! My understanding, in the UK a mortgage application usually takes about two or so weeks. In our circumstances, we had everything we needed to submit, so we went and did that. Nationwide then went to both our employers to ensure we were working for them. Mine was easy, the payslips were for permanent employment and I'd just passed probation the month before. As I said above however, my partner works for a company but is actually looked after by an agency - Adecco. 

I won't skimp over names because they know absolutely what they did was wrong. So Nationwide reached out to Adecco, this requires a short form, I've seen it myself, it's barely 6 or so fields for the payroll team to fill in. Then they either stamp it with the company seal OR provide a letterhead. It's a fairly easy process, shouldn't take more than about 10 minutes for a payroll manager to do. It just asks for the tax, national insurance. Standard stuff really! ....Hahaha...

So July rolls around..

So let's cut to Wednesday 28th July, we've been begging Adecco to sort it out for weeks, two brokers, myself and my husband, emailing, calling, sitting on hold...bearing in mind that the application was submitted on the 6th June(!!). It seemed as though we were being stonewalled for no reason. I then come home from a day out with my partner and we are cc'ed into an email from my broker to ALL of the biggest emails one can send to Adecco.

TL;DR if Adecco didn't release the information in the format that Nationwide needed (they had tried to submit the details with their own form two weeks prior) then Nationwide would cancel the whole process by the end of the day 30th July. This would mean we'd lose both our lender...and potentially the house. We had effectively 48 hours to get them to comply. 

For some reason Adecco have a WHOLE TEAM whose job it is to deal with requests such as these, but 7+ hours of being on hold and several emails led to nowhere. Thankfully, a contact my partner had really stepped up to the plate on Wednesday evening and set about trying to save our mortgage application. Pestering the team whose whole job it is to do this, to please save our mortgage. 

In total we had 5 different people working our case, the person who originally dealt with the form back in June FINALLY sent the details (she actually missed a field so we had to go back and forth over the course of 3 hours) and then we had to beg them to send a letterhead. On Thursday afternoon we managed to submit everything so Nationwide can approve/deny our mortgage. Thank fuck. 

The irony is we finally got a lengthy apology from the manager of the lady mentioned above and she spelt my partner's name completely incorrectly. It also wasn't sent to my partner just my broker. So thankfully my broker forwarded it on to us.

But now hopefully, we'll get out approval early next week. With a homebuyer survey due end of the month its looking like we might be able to sort out this thing Sept. So there's one for you, an employer nearly blocked us from buying a house. Something nobody (not even my broker OR Nationwide) have ever come across. 

[Cube]

Good luck!

We're now trying to view houses. Phoned for 7 houses and they all had offers pending, or accepted and waiting for all solicitor stuff to happen. Because of how busy is it, all of them want conformation of the decision in principal before viewing so it's a good job we've got that sorted. We had a viewing booked for one place on Monday, but were contacted Friday to change it to today because it had offers on (it appeared on the market on Wednesday). It was a nice house, but you could tell it would be expensive to maintain it, with lots of potential to mould (it looked like there was some on the outside of the building), and water damage in the lounge ceiling. The estate agent (after noticing us looking at it) mentioned a vague promise from the owner to fix it or "agree to something in the price", which didn't give us much confidence. 

 

We're looking at another one on Wednesday, not in the town we want but it's only out by a couple of roads. This one has an outbuilding with electric which looks perfect for a board game hut. Plus it's number 64, which is a really awesome number to have. If we get it, I'll definitely design a house sign with the N64 logo. 

 

I expect we'll be outbit a lot and it will take quite a lot of viewing before we not only find one, but are able to put a decent offer in. 

[Will]

What sort of deposit are you guys being asked to put down at the moment? We’re starting to seriously consider moving back to the UK and if we did I’d probably look to buy rather than rent. Unfortunately my savings got wiped out last year but we’ve managed to build them back up fairly well over the last 12 months. If we were to move back tomorrow then at the price range we’re looking at a 5% deposit would be pretty easy, but maybe with a more realistic time frame we might be able to push closer to 10% - are decent deals available with that kind of deposit?

[nightwolf]

1 hour ago, Will said:

What sort of deposit are you guys being asked to put down at the moment? We’re starting to seriously consider moving back to the UK and if we did I’d probably look to buy rather than rent. Unfortunately my savings got wiped out last year but we’ve managed to build them back up fairly well over the last 12 months. If we were to move back tomorrow then at the price range we’re looking at a 5% deposit would be pretty easy, but maybe with a more realistic time frame we might be able to push closer to 10% - are decent deals available with that kind of deposit?

10%, we considered 5% but the whole thing just looked unappealing. For pure numbers, we're buying a 260k house (fairly reasonable given we're in the south of the country) so 26k. 

[Cube]

2 hours ago, Will said:

What sort of deposit are you guys being asked to put down at the moment? We’re starting to seriously consider moving back to the UK and if we did I’d probably look to buy rather than rent. Unfortunately my savings got wiped out last year but we’ve managed to build them back up fairly well over the last 12 months. If we were to move back tomorrow then at the price range we’re looking at a 5% deposit would be pretty easy, but maybe with a more realistic time frame we might be able to push closer to 10% - are decent deals available with that kind of deposit?

Ours is a 5% deposit, one of the reasons why it's difficult got us to get a loan at this amount. Our monthly payments aren't too bad. 

[Will]

1 hour ago, nightwolf said:

10%, we considered 5% but the whole thing just looked unappealing. For pure numbers, we're buying a 260k house (fairly reasonable given we're in the south of the country) so 26k. 

Sounds very reasonable! I’m (very casually) looking in the Midlands and at 260k you really don’t get too much even up there.

25 minutes ago, Cube said:

Ours is a 5% deposit, one of the reasons why it's difficult got us to get a loan at this amount. Our monthly payments aren't too bad. 

So 5% seems possible but not ideal I guess?

Will have to look into this a lot more, thanks for the info. In reality it will probably take us quite a while to find something so we can probably get closer to the 10% deposit by the time we find something to buy. Might be some family help too so that will play a part. Definitely enjoying looking at what’s available though, at the top end of our budget there are some really nice places.

[nightwolf]

1 hour ago, Will said:

Sounds very reasonable! I’m (very casually) looking in the Midlands and at 260k you really don’t get too much even up there.

So 5% seems possible but not ideal I guess?

Will have to look into this a lot more, thanks for the info. In reality it will probably take us quite a while to find something so we can probably get closer to the 10% deposit by the time we find something to buy. Might be some family help too so that will play a part. Definitely enjoying looking at what’s available though, at the top end of our budget there are some really nice places.

We've gotten a 3.5 bed (there is a downstairs room that is effectively a single bedroom but has been converted to a large office with 2 bath for the price. Given the current climate and the standard its been done its a steal! We saved 40k in the end, so its allowed us to pay the fees needed to move in comfortably.

5% are fine, but you have to weigh up what offers you're made by the lenders you go too really, I was personally not advised by my broker to do it especially as we had the funds to go with 10%. It took about three years of pushing to save up for the deposit (we got some money from company shares I had that really helped about 25% of that saving too). 

GL! 

[Raining_again]

I remember in 2016 it was kinda difficult to get a 5% mortgage, the only way i could get one was via a save to buy scheme (i had my deposit savings with the bank that gave me the mortgage).  But generally your interest will be higher rate and longer term which adds up cost wise.  When i went to my mortgage planning thing they ran the numbers for me and i would have paid substantially more over the long run and would have had a longer term.  It was a little bit tight going for me to pull 10% together, admittedly the very annoying legal delay helped me gather enough lol

Its not the best investment, BUT if its your only viable solution (not being able to downsize budget, or on a time crunch) its certainly doable.  If you do go the 5% route look into how much you can overpay without fees once it starts - even if you pay a small amount consistently every month you can start to chip away on the debt, which **really** helps come renewal time.

Any time mortgage discussions come up in my family my mum always retells the time they bought their house in 1996, they were offered a 120% mortgage.  They only needed 100, they really hit the hard sales for that 120.  Now its like you have to fight to get 90% even with a decent history lol

Really bothers me when people are critical of people our age (millenials and younger) not being able to get on the ladder, like, hello... very conveniently forgotten how people in the boomer gen had both secure jobs til retirement and 100%+ mortgages available to them ???

[Ashley]

I know I'm not buying but fired off some emails to rental properties last weekend and forgot what a ballache it is because they just ask for salary and having to explain that currently I am in my first full year of having a limited company in which I'm a director, last year I did a little bit of that and a little self employed and haven't done my taxes yet (although I can but lazy) and that then brings us back to the previous year in which I was PAYE anyway.

Also part of why I can't even look at buying for a few years anyway because they want two years as self employed.

[nightwolf]

16 hours ago, Ashley said:

I know I'm not buying but fired off some emails to rental properties last weekend and forgot what a ballache it is because they just ask for salary and having to explain that currently I am in my first full year of having a limited company in which I'm a director, last year I did a little bit of that and a little self employed and haven't done my taxes yet (although I can but lazy) and that then brings us back to the previous year in which I was PAYE anyway.

Also part of why I can't even look at buying for a few years anyway because they want two years as self employed.

Its awful the way they ask for things. Two years stable in self-employment but 3 months in my job and they approved me instantly. Don't they know I could fail probation? 

Anyway, we're still waiting, because of course we are. Everything was submitted successfully and then Nationwide decided that they wanted it submitted by the employer and not my broker - something my broker said she'd never had an issue with before! I swear if they don't approve us after all that I'm going to burn them to the ground. 

[Cube]

We put in an offer which was accepted. Now to start the long process of all paperwork and checks.

 

But still, it's very exciting. I've even made a logo for the house.

 

 

I don't know if I'll register the name properly, but I like the idea of a sign with a name. The name is a very, very loose translation of "Nintendo" into Welsh. My fiancée is fine with me effectively calling the house "Nintendo 64".

[nightwolf]

We got approved!! The mortgage was sorted earlier this week. Just as the interest rates dropped but I am too scared to try as it's been such a process as is. Thankfully our rate isn't crazy and the mortgage repayments are absolutely fine. 

Now we are on insurance and about to do the deposit! Huzzah. 

[Raining_again]

hell yeaaaaa grats @Cube@nightwolf

@Ashley fucks sake thats ridiculous