on buying houses/flats (mainly in London but all advice welcome)

Our tenency is probably coming to an end at the end of the year. And I'm thinking it may be time to go and buy a flat somewhere. But I am pretty clueless in this department (really ought to have been done way earlier)

How long is the buying house process? Is this something that can be done in a couple of months, provided I find somewhere appropriate? I don't *think* I'll have a problem getting a mortgage sorted out (have quite a decent amount for deposit), but i guess it also depends on whether the house has like buying chains and stuff going on? (I'll be a 1st time buyer)

Is there anyone i need to talk to? Will I need to get a Solicitor? any advice welcome (and wish me luck!)..

Luck.

ty

Hi dere. This used to be my job.

Yes, you can talk to an independent financial advisor. They'll walk you through the process, go through your financial state and tell you if you can afford a mortgage, and ifso, how much. As a first time buyer, you are actually entitled to special help and the like. Yes, you will need a solicitor, but larger IFAs often have deals with law firms where they can find you one on a special rate.

It generally takes about 3 months from start to finish if there are no complications (chains or the like, or problems with you or the property.) I managed to buy my house in 6 weeks, but that was cause I was working for a broker.

The bigger the deposit you have, the better deal you will be able to get.

Go to an IFA and have a chat - a good one won't charge you anything up front as they'll get fees from the banks anyway.

Length of process depends on the chain, though you being a first time buyer helps of course. It could be as little as a couple of months or as much as a year.

Chain probably won't affect size of deposit needed, but people seem to be saying you need 20-25% or so minimum these days? I'm not sure about that though, other factors might mitigate.

You could do all the conveyancing yourself, but you'd have to be very patient and knowledgeable and since you've come to ILX for your initial advice I suspect you won't want to do the necessary research! So yes, you'll need a solicitor. The vast majority of buyers use them.

A good first step would be to get pre-approval for a mortgage from a bank/building society, even before you've found a specific place - this saves time later.

NB all this advice is 9 years out of date so listen to Kate and not me on the details. Good luck!

Yes these are the kind of info i need actually thanks both!!

Actually my bank (HSBC) offers me access to IFAs so I'll arrange a meeting!

So is the house buying process (in a nutshell) basically

1. work out what mortgage you can get (and thus your budget and how much you want to spend)
2. find a house for that kind of price that which is nice
3. put in offer
4. surveyors(?)
5. sign contract purchase house

??

I just bought a flat! It took ages. We had to sell one first, though.

When we bought our first flat we had an IFA, and they were quite helpful initially, but then totally useless later on. It was loads easier to deal with the mortgage company direct. So take their advice, and let them find you a deal, but then get on with it yourself.
This time round we didn't bother. Fingers crossed I haven't made some enormous fuck-up!

But anyway, the first thing to do is the fun bit. Find a flat you like at a price you like. Only then get a solicitor. You can get a provisional mortgage offer before you start looking, but if you have no idea how much you're going to have to borrow, it seems a bit pointless. It's a bit of a chicken and egg situation, though.

Finding an estate agent you like (and trust) is a good idea. Then they can find you a flat and also will have their own recommended solicitors, surveyors and possibly IFAs.

I reckon from first looking to moving in, you're looking at 6 months, if either of our experiences is anything to go by.

Oh! Forgot to mention. Number one rule of finding a good IFA is make sure they ARE Independent - i.e. not tied to any particular lender. (Some of them are even owned by a bank in order to funnel customers towards them.)

x-post i.e. your bank will offer you access to IFAs that are tied to your bank. Which is fine if you know you want to go with your bank, but be aware of it.

Yes.

1) Go to IFA, work out your budget WRT deposit, salary, first time deals, etc.
2) find a house
3) put in offer
4) Surveyors - I'm not sure how this has been affected by HIP packages, but it can't hurt
5) tug and back and forth with lawyers and banks (there will be faff, it will be stressful, but yes, you can get through it. IFAs who are also brokers are really great at smoothing this process, it's their job to faff for you. Alls I can say is, I had a very different experience from Jamie, but like I said, I worked for one, so I could go upstairs and see what was up with my mortgage)
6) sign contract, money goes from lender to buyer, usually within a week
7) go to estate agent, pick up your keys, move into happy new house!

4. There are three types of survey. There's a basic one (a valuation survey) that is a requirement by the mortgage provider to lend you the money. Basically it just answers whether it is worth what you are proposing paying for it. In our experieince the mortgage company made you use their surveyor for this. Then there's a homebuyer survey and a full survey (i think those are the terms) which go into a bit more detail. My wife's dad is a retired surveyor, so in both cases, we just got the basic one and let him have a poke round as well.

I think the basic ones are pretty good at spotting major stuff. If they think there's damp, they require you to get a separate damp report. If there are structural issues (which there were on our first flat - they initially refused us the mortgage) they require you to get a structural engineer's report. So you can be reassured that it's not going to fall over. You'd have to ask someone else if the other surveys are worth it.

Your solicitor will do a number of searches, to check if anyone else has a legal claim on the flat, or if there is going to be a cement factory built next door the day after you move in, so that covers all that sort of thing. Flats are usually a nightmare, especially if in a converted old house, as you are legally entangled with the other tenants, the freeholder, and the lease is usually some bizarre indecipherable Victorian document with weird covenants. So get a proper solicitor, not a telephone conveyancer.

My advice: location, location, location.

So get a proper solicitor, not a telephone conveyancer.
This, 1000 times over. Residential conveyancing is not hard to do at all and the issues with telephone conveyancers are rarely on the legal work and are mainly in relation to organisation and how they interact with you (if at all!). Having a competent solicitor will make things forty billion times less irritating.

a competent solicitor

And that's the tricky part. I would ask around see if anyone knows/is a solicitor. We've used both kinds, the incompetant ones can double/treble/sign for infinity the time it takes and increase the fee. You used to be able to get a set fee from a solicitor - which was more expensive than average but if you run into difficulties could certainly save you a lot of money, it also helps them to focus. I have no idea how much this thing costs nowadays/in London, though no doubt others do.

It was around 800 plus searches plus VAT (which I moronically left out of our budget, making things a bit tricky now), but with the proviso that if the sale proved to be "substantially more complicated" it would be more.
It was, and it was more.

I'd set aside 2 grand.

Main problem I had was with insurance: had gathered all my payslips and bank statements and compiled some imaginary monthly budget to show to the mortgage broker, but I hadn't realised it would be a three-hour grilling and also involve me telling him all my health details so he could fill in a life insurance form for me... which it later turned out I didn't actually need to get the mortgage, he was just hoping for more commission

Plus you end up with several different kinds of insurance all from different companies, who will ignore all your forms and enquiries for a month or so and then all write to you at once, when I couldn't remember which ones I'd already agreed to sign up to and which ones were trying to worry me into signing up for something else as well. So if I did it again I'd grill the broker/IFA more about which ones were actually required and make a very careful note of who I was getting what from.

Solicitors are useful because if anyone is sitting on some paperwork required to proceed they can hassle you/them, and also look through the impenetrable legal waffle and tell you if anything is sketchy, though you may be left to take or leave said sketchiness when you're already a couple of grand and several months into the process

Oh (xpost), yes, don't drain yr bank account completely for a deposit or sign up to the absolute most expensive deal you think you can fit into your budget because there WILL be something you've forgotten you need to pay for, either in terms of fees/ground rent/council tax/stamp duty, or just "oh crap, now I'm here I don't have a fridge or any curtain rails, but I only have 37p to last me until payday"

which it later turned out I didn't actually need to get the mortgage, he was just hoping for more commission

Yeah, definitely watch out for this type of thing or you'll end up with more insurance than you need and a new pension.

Erm, actually, lots of lenders do require insurance on the LOAN. This is not the same thing as life insurance on you. Seems like a small difference, but it's worth getting clarification from your lender on this, as I think insurance on the loan may be an FSA compliance requirement.

(That said, I was totally unable to get insurance on the loan, due to being Bipolar, and the loan went ahead anyway due to a funny handshake upstairs.)

I'm pretty sure it's now illegal for them to make getting repayment insurance a condition of getting the loan - just as it is with credit cards etc. Even if you want it, it's almost always cheaper to get it separately.

It IS however a legal requirement to have buildings insurance, which they will also offer you. However, with most flats, the freeholder gets insurance for the whole building, and then you pay them.

No, not repayment insurance. Insurance on the loan. That if you drop dead, the loan gets repaid. It certainly wasn't illegal when I was working in mortgages - which was 2 years ago? - in fact your loan wasn't fully compliant without it.

That said, I admit a lot has changed in the past 2 years.

Yes the expenses is the other thing I was going to ask, and how much to set aside etc for fees/etc (plus a little bit more in case i suddenly lose my job for whatever reason!) would something like £5k be a reasonable amount? (legal fees/stamp duty etc) are we still on that "stamp duty holiday" thing? (although it doesn't currently look like there are places around below £175,000.. asking price, anyway)

xpost

Well, we haven't got it, as of five weeks ago when we did the deed.

Having said that, we both get life insurance through work, so maybe they asked us that and then didn't need to talk about the loan insurance.

I've never heard of it, though. They did offer us insurance on the loan, but that was for if you lost job, had major illness, etc. Are you sure there is a separate kind of loan insurance only for if you die, that isn't life insurance?

Right there is. Mortgage Life Insurance. http://www.nationwide.co.uk/insurance/life_insurance/mortgage_life_assurance/introduction.htm

It still doesn't seem to say anything about it being mandatory.

No, not repayment insurance. Insurance on the loan. That if you drop dead, the loan gets repaid. It certainly wasn't illegal when I was working in mortgages - which was 2 years ago? - in fact your loan wasn't fully compliant without it.

No, we had no insurance on the loan (until we got life insurance a couple of years ago). Home insurance, yes, but nothing else.

ah cool. well in any case i will check it out anyway (maybe it's worth taking out some kind of insurance for in case i lose my job anyway for whatever reason?)!

thanks everyone for the information by the way - this is a very good starting step for me as before i've been clueless as to how to start going about it!

It took us four days to buy our first house - mortgage approved in principle on the Tuesday, survey carried out on the Wednesday, offer in Friday morning, offer accepted Friday lunchtime. We moved in about three weeks later.

Definitely take out some form of insurance against losing your job - the house itself is the bank's security against you not paying them back all the money you are borrowing off them, and if you don't have enough savings to cover your repayments while you find another job (remember that your earnings will go down a bit if you're long-term sick - it's not just losing your job that can screw you) then they won't be too bothered about just repossessing your house. I've never heard of this "insurance on the loan" thing either, though it may be different in Scotland (but I watch a LOT of property shows and it's never mentioned on them either). You could apply to be on Location Location Location or something, and get Phil and Kirstie to do it all for you!

I cannot believe how much hassle that life assurance policy thing used to cause us on the FSA Compliance every freaking day at my old job - and none of you have ever even heard of it.

How much easier my job would have been if it hadn't been the case. This is just bizarre.

Right, googling tells me it's something that the lender needs if the buyer has a low-ish deposit (seems to be if your LTV is more than 80%), but it's not necessarily paid by the borrower, rather it's the lender covering their own backs if necessary, if I'm reading this right.

http://www.genworth.co.uk/content/genworth/uk/en/products/mortgage_insurance/about_mortgage_insurance/How_MI_works.html

Ha! It was never paid by the lender. Always the borrower. But that 80% LTV thing might make sense - still, we had to check for them on every damn mortgage.

Ken - we got this book before we bought a flat:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Which-Sell-Flat-Consumer-Guides/dp/0852029764/ref=sr_1_14?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252352025&sr=1-14
I didn't read all of it, but there was a lot of useful stuff there, especially as
a) I knew next to nothing about it
b) Buying a flat is much more complicated than buying a house (for the reasons given upthread)

Myself and Mrs Chuck are living in London Fields at the moment, but we're on the lookout for a house for our first mortgage. As a terminal north-west Londoner, I've been looking at Cricklewood, as it seems like the most central place where a small house with garden is still somewhat affordable. Anyone recommend anywhere else similar? Also, is Cricklewood quite as boring as I think it is? Compared to Hendon where I grew up, it might as well be West Berlin.

Never been in Cricklewood. Suggest listening to Side 2, Track 2 of this:

http://vinyle.com.pl/galerie/t/the-goodies-greatest-hit_1192.jpg