House buying is the worst

[Cube]

47 minutes ago, Will said:

How’s the move-in going, @Cube? Hope it’s all smooth.

 

Going well, getting there with the unpacking! It's a lovely house, bigger than I remember from the viewing.

 

Previous owners left plenty of instructions for the appliances, CCTV and alarms. Even left us some money to get a take away. All the stuff went in in Thursday and slowly settings it up. No internet until Wednesday but not a huge wait.

Still need to work out what to do with an outbuilding, one half is a proper office with lots of plugs, massive desk and its own toilet, other half is just a room. Probably have stuff in there for garden parties.

Considering what we've seen on the market since we put the offer in early September, we've been extremely lucky.

 

[Will]

1 hour ago, Ashley said:

My mom is buying a place and put an offer in and got a survey report thing back the other day and the electrics need doing, something else and there may be asbestos in the ceiling so she's gutted as she's not sure if it's worth it. Apparently previous sales have fallen though and she thinks this may be why. When I last spoke to her she said she was going to think about it and maybe offer a lower price to account for the work needed.

Exactly the same thing happened with my sister. They got the work quoted for and offered less on the house by that amount. I think they ended up meeting halfway and sharing the costs of the required work. Depends how much your mom wants it but it definitely opens up room for negotiations.

 

[Will]

42 minutes ago, Cube said:

Going well, getting there with the unpacking! It's a lovely house, bigger than I remember from the viewing.

Looks really great! Definitely post up more pictures for us to see when you have more stuff in order!

[Will]

43 minutes ago, Cube said:

Previous owners left plenty of instructions for the appliances, CCTV and alarms. Even left us some money to get a take away. All the stuff went in in Thursday and slowly settings it up. No internet until Wednesday but not a huge wait.

That's really nice of them! Not too bad of a wait for the internet really. Our place is coming with Fiber pre-installed so I'm hoping it's just a case of making an account and it will start working immediately.

[Will]

45 minutes ago, Cube said:

Still need to work out what to do with an outbuilding, one half is a proper office with lots of plugs, massive desk and its own toilet, other half is just a room. Probably have stuff in there for garden parties.

That's very cool! One of the places we looked at had a really nice garden office. Really really wanted that place but the location would have been a pain.

[Will]

45 minutes ago, Cube said:

Considering what we've seen on the market since we put the offer in early September, we've been extremely lucky.

Yeah. Where we've been looking it seems you maybe get one decent place a week and it's usually gone within a day. The only reason we got our place was because we happened to be there hours after a sale had fallen through and we saw it before it went on the market. If we hadn't of got this place I'm sure we'd still be looking and having very little luck

Sorry about the multiple posts, for some reason the forum won't let me quote multiple things in a single post right now.

[Ashley]

17 minutes ago, Will said:

Yeah. Where we've been looking it seems you maybe get one decent place a week and it's usually gone within a day. The only reason we got our place was because we happened to be there hours after a sale had fallen through and we saw it before it went on the market. If we hadn't of got this place I'm sure we'd still be looking and having very little luck

You can it's just a bit awkward (especially on mobile). 

You just need to create the second quote yourself by using the button in the editor and then copy and paste it in

Quote

Sorry about the multiple posts, for some reason the forum won't let me quote multiple things in a single post right now.

Like this

(Although me doing it in that order doesn't read very sensibly but whatever)

[Will]

I usually just highlight the stuff I want to quote and the "quote this" thing appears - for some reason it doesn't work anymore and I'm too old to learn a new way of doing it. I also like it having the name/time properly added.

[Ashley]

I actually had no idea that was a thing 😅

But it's there for me so I guess it's just some temporary weirdness for you

[Will]

16 minutes ago, Ashley said:

I actually had no idea that was a thing 😅

 

Happy to bring such a beautiful thing into your life.

It still shows up for me, just it only works with the first thing I want to quote. When I try to do a second thing it just never appears in the reply box.

[nightwolf]

4 hours ago, Cube said:

Going well, getting there with the unpacking! It's a lovely house, bigger than I remember from the viewing.

 

Previous owners left plenty of instructions for the appliances, CCTV and alarms. Even left us some money to get a take away. All the stuff went in in Thursday and slowly settings it up. No internet until Wednesday but not a huge wait.

Still need to work out what to do with an outbuilding, one half is a proper office with lots of plugs, massive desk and its own toilet, other half is just a room. Probably have stuff in there for garden parties.

Considering what we've seen on the market since we put the offer in early September, we've been extremely lucky.

 

Very lucky! Ours left without cleaning and no instructions for anything. Had to figure out the water heater and it took ages for us to understand it (its old so instructions online were hard to come by) and I spent a solid week having to clean the damn house, they'd not even cleaned the sink so it still had food bits in it. Given how pushy they were to complete they had time to clean at least a little bit, bastards. Respect to yours for doing what they could for you. 

Otherwise that looks great! Pictures look like you don't have much to change? Any immediate plans? 

[Cube]

22 minutes ago, nightwolf said:

 

Otherwise that looks great! Pictures look like you don't have much to change? Any immediate plans? 

There's a wall in the bedroom we're not too keen on, but other than that we like it how it is. There's some touching up to do, but handily all the leftover paint for all the different walls is in the garage.

[Will]

So nigh on two weeks later the solicitors have finally confirmed that we can go ahead and actually buy our place. They’ve said that they will send me contracts tomorrow but exactly what that means or when we’ll progress further I have no idea. I’m really pissed about how crap they’ve been but also trying to not let that put a downer on the super good thing of getting our own home. Hopefully not too long before we’ll actually be in.

@Cube, how’s everything going with your place now?

[Cube]

15 hours ago, Will said:

 

@Cube, how’s everything going with your place now?

Going pretty well. I think we're pretty much sorted. The last big thing was sorting out the clothes, which we did on Sunday. Now it's just getting rid of empty boxes over time, but they're out of the way in the garage. 

 

I need to get some pictures and stuff. CCTV is also up and running, really impressed with the system they have in place (you can access via an app with alerts and stuff. Cats are all happy.

[nightwolf]

Nice, part of me wonders if we need a DIY/home changes thread, I know we've done a ton to show (and a lot of lessons learned too) 

[Ashley]

2 hours ago, nightwolf said:

Nice, part of me wonders if we need a DIY/home changes thread, I know we've done a ton to show (and a lot of lessons learned too) 

I hereby give you permission to start a new thread.

[Will]

We exchanged contracts today!

Things move forward but at a snails pace, we now have to wait three weeks (at least) to do a pre-completion inspection. I wouldn’t mind so much if there was some reason for it being three weeks away but it seems to just be when they can bother to schedule us in. They wanted to book it in for the end of March which co-insides with GDC and then I’m away on other business for a few weeks. All in all, if they can’t arrange the inspection earlier than they currently think, we won’t be moving in until the end of April.

[Will]

We have a date! March 18th we do all the inspections, complete, and move in. Shouldn’t be anything to stop that, but it’s just a pain it’s the day before I fly out the San Francisco so won’t actually get to enjoy it too much. Super excited to actually have something moving forward though!

[Mr-Paul]

So I'm looking to get buying soon and was just wondering who/what people did for decision in principles before viewing/putting in offers?

Was looking at Nationwide as they seemed to offer a good amount for my income based on their calculator, and have a thing called a Helping Hand mortgage too that offers even more (looking at this because I want to buy in/near London at it's pricey, so the more I can borrow the better really).

Did go in branch today to try and talk to someone about it but they said they're not doing in-person stuff on mortgages, just online application or phone.

Or should I be going to a broker (or doing both?) Should I find a local broker, or a bigger company suggested by the likes of MSE? 

Any suggestions welcome

[Will]

I went with a local broker recommended by my sister. They took the fee from the bank side so cost me nothing, and although I could have applied online myself they by far made themselves worthwhile by being the only reliable person I’ve dealt with in the whole buying process. Have been happy to jump on a call with me at any time to run me through how everything works or talk me through the paperwork. I’d really recommend going with someone if you can.

[Cube]

I went with a local fiance advisor, who found brokers for us. But I had unique circumstances (well, a default probably isn't unique but not normal for mortgages) that made going with a larger company impossible.

[nightwolf]

I went with a broker who was in Manchester (I'm in Cambridgeshire), they were recommended by my parents as they had recently purchased after living in France. My broker is worth her weight in GOLD and I will not be told otherwise. She navigated some serious crap for our house buying (we nearly lost the mortgage and then later nearly lost the house). She'll also be there to help us remortgage later down the road. We also used a solicitors in the same area as her and because of covid it didn't matter we weren't near one another. My solicitor used an app to help us keep track of the whole process which I strangely ended up loving. Weird process though. 

I'd say it really depends on you and your circumstance, in ours we felt it would be relatively easy to buy, but went with a broker anyway as I'm quite unwell. As you can read above, it was worth the money and I've been telling people to get brokers themselves if they can afford the extra cost. For us she was £495 for her time and our survey was more expensive! Which is insane. 

Friends recently bought at the same time and went through it with Nationwide without a broker and found them lovely (our mortgage is also with them too). So I'd say a solid choice if you want to go that way.  

[bob]

We paid £1000 for a mortgage advisor (but then got £500 off the price of the mortgage, so I guess it was half that), but we get them for life. So every time the mortgage comes up for renewal, we can get them to look around for deals and sort out the switch for us. Seems like a bargain as far as I'm concerned.

[Will]

Everything seems to be moving ahead as planned for us and we'll be moving in tomorrow! Bit stressful today trying to get all our stuff ready but very excited to finally be getting in there. Just a few things left to do this afternoon and we'll be all ready.

[Will]

So the move went extremely smoothly in the end. It was a super busy day of things being delivered and trying to get everything in a decent enough position before I went away for the week. Since then we’ve been slowly picking up a few bits and pieces and making lists of things that need to be sorted out.

Overall I’m REALLY glad we went with the new build. The issues are minimal and there is nothing that really causes us a big issue. Probably the biggest one so far is a bit of a bubble under the hallway floor. Having all new stuff and a fresh feeling to everything is also really nice.

The insulation is also insanely good. When I was staying with my parents/sister we’d have the heating on to just about get comfortable and then we’d feel cold less than an hour later. Here we lose barely anything and it’s never got cold enough to feel even slightly uncomfortable.

Now I have a week to try and get some things done before my next trip. Probably won’t manage much but with a bit of luck I can plan for a few things to happen while I’m away.