Buying a house (and renting)

BID0 wrote:You should have your current place sold AND have a mortgage offered by a bank before you go looking at a house and put an offer in otherwise it can cause a chain to collapse.

How can you put an offer down for a new place if you don't even know what your budget is? I find it absurd that people go looking at houses without knowing that basic information.

I can get behind this argument if you have a requirement to move, but what if you're fine where you are and only want to move if the right house comes onto the market? You sell your house but tell the buyer they might be waiting 2 years until the right property comes along?

The budgeting might also not be that big a risk if you're not maxing out your budget like if you're downsizing or moving somewhere cheaper. Sure you might not know exactly how much your house will sell for but if it's valued 100k over wherever you are looking to buy that's not a big risk.

Moggy wrote:

BID0 wrote:

Moggy wrote:

BID0 wrote:You should have your current place sold AND have a mortgage offered by a bank before you go looking at a house and put an offer in otherwise it can cause a chain to collapse.

Exactly, people should sell their homes and be living in the streets before moving to another place!

I don't know what that's meant to mean?

You don't move out until contracts are exchanged ready for the completion stage which normally takes 1-2 weeks for moving day.

You said we should have a place sold before looking at another property.

It's ridiculous to restrict viewings to people who already have an offer on the table. I understand people don't want to be in lengthy chains, but the process will fall down just as easily if people are not allowed to even view a property until they've got a buyer for their property.

An accepted offer is Sold - STC (subject to contract)

You have 2 offers for your property £200k and £201k. You accept the offer for £201k.
You then get the bank to credit check you to get your previously mortgage offer accepted for £80k.
You have a £281k budget and look at properties up to that price.

OrangeRKN wrote:

BID0 wrote:You should have your current place sold AND have a mortgage offered by a bank before you go looking at a house and put an offer in otherwise it can cause a chain to collapse.

How can you put an offer down for a new place if you don't even know what your budget is? I find it absurd that people go looking at houses without knowing that basic information.

I can get behind this argument if you have a requirement to move, but what if you're fine where you are and only want to move if the right house comes onto the market? You sell your house but tell the buyer they might be waiting 2 years until the right property comes along?

The budgeting might also not be that big a risk if you're not maxing out your budget like if you're downsizing or moving somewhere cheaper. Sure you might not know exactly how much your house will sell for but if it's valued 100k over wherever you are looking to buy that's not a big risk.

You get an estate agent to value your place or use a website like zoopla? Then use bank calculators online to get an estimated mortgage balance and then use that to look at photos of houses? You don't need to sell your property or arrange to look at other peoples in person.

This is why I keep my current property to rent when I buy a new place. No chains

BID0 wrote:

OrangeRKN wrote:

BID0 wrote:You should have your current place sold AND have a mortgage offered by a bank before you go looking at a house and put an offer in otherwise it can cause a chain to collapse.

How can you put an offer down for a new place if you don't even know what your budget is? I find it absurd that people go looking at houses without knowing that basic information.

I can get behind this argument if you have a requirement to move, but what if you're fine where you are and only want to move if the right house comes onto the market? You sell your house but tell the buyer they might be waiting 2 years until the right property comes along?

The budgeting might also not be that big a risk if you're not maxing out your budget like if you're downsizing or moving somewhere cheaper. Sure you might not know exactly how much your house will sell for but if it's valued 100k over wherever you are looking to buy that's not a big risk.

You get an estate agent to value your place or use a website like zoopla? Then use bank calculators online to get an estimated mortgage balance and then use that to look at photos of houses? You don't need to sell your house or put in an offer to buy someone elses.

I'm very confused because I was replying to you saying the opposite...?

This is why we should have left property ownership to the Lords and Barons of the world. Us common folk have no place in dealing with such complicated matters!

Tomous wrote:

Grumpy David wrote:There's a lot to be said for the Scottish method of buying / selling houses.

You get a Scottish Home Report which confirms the market value so you don't have the risk of the lender down valuing the home. You can buy over this amount but if it's say 200k value and you want to offer 205k but have a 10% deposit, it's 20k + 5k extra, rather than then the lender giving you 90% of 205k which does take some of the heat out the market.

It also is a Homebuyer Report, not the useless mortgage valuation report so you get a lengthy document to review. And it's much trickier to pull out of a purchase after your offer is accepted.

Plus they abolished the much hated leasehold almost 20 years ago. The UK introduced Commonhold around a similar time but it never took off (at the very least it should have been the required process for all new build blocks of flats) and virtually doesn't exist.

This all sounds extremely smart to me. What's the catch?

You can probably argue that since the seller has to pay for a Scottish Home Report to market the home (essentially an Energy Performance Certificate and Homebuyer Report) that this initial upfront cost might be off-putting to sellers so fewer properties come onto the market but you can also spin this as a feature, not a bug, since only serious sellers will pay it.

And with the leasehold replacement, it's arguably more fiddly (less so for houses turned into 2 flats) when you want to get communal maintenance or repair work done as you need a majority of flat owners to agree (unless essential repairs). So you potentially have the general upkeep being ignored until the problem becomes too big to ignore (and more expensive to sort compared to being nipped in the bud earlier) or something like ground floor flat owners complaining about being asked to contribute to repairs of the lifts etc. Even a modest block of flats might have 30 different people, but some of the new builds would mean hundreds of people communicating amongst each other.

The system basically eliminates Gazumping and also pretty much estate agents too since the conveyancing solicitor tends to market the property.

I'm in no way up on the exact ins and outs of it but the Scottish system has always seemed so much more sensible to me!

OrangeRKN wrote:

BID0 wrote:

OrangeRKN wrote:

BID0 wrote:You should have your current place sold AND have a mortgage offered by a bank before you go looking at a house and put an offer in otherwise it can cause a chain to collapse.

How can you put an offer down for a new place if you don't even know what your budget is? I find it absurd that people go looking at houses without knowing that basic information.

I can get behind this argument if you have a requirement to move, but what if you're fine where you are and only want to move if the right house comes onto the market? You sell your house but tell the buyer they might be waiting 2 years until the right property comes along?

The budgeting might also not be that big a risk if you're not maxing out your budget like if you're downsizing or moving somewhere cheaper. Sure you might not know exactly how much your house will sell for but if it's valued 100k over wherever you are looking to buy that's not a big risk.

You get an estate agent to value your place or use a website like zoopla? Then use bank calculators online to get an estimated mortgage balance and then use that to look at photos of houses? You don't need to sell your house or put in an offer to buy someone elses.

I'm very confused because I was replying to you saying the opposite...?

Sorry see my edit earlier before you quoted me. You can still play through the keyhole and look at houses without having to arrange viewings. And if you see a place you like online then be upfront about not being able to put an offer in and then the estate agent or seller can deny the viewing if they wish. These are edge whatabout cases and not really what was originally being talked about, which was finding it odd at being denied a viewing of a place by an estate agent. The reasons why that happens is what is being talked about.

Grumpy David wrote:

Tomous wrote:

Grumpy David wrote:There's a lot to be said for the Scottish method of buying / selling houses.

You get a Scottish Home Report which confirms the market value so you don't have the risk of the lender down valuing the home. You can buy over this amount but if it's say 200k value and you want to offer 205k but have a 10% deposit, it's 20k + 5k extra, rather than then the lender giving you 90% of 205k which does take some of the heat out the market.

It also is a Homebuyer Report, not the useless mortgage valuation report so you get a lengthy document to review. And it's much trickier to pull out of a purchase after your offer is accepted.

Plus they abolished the much hated leasehold almost 20 years ago. The UK introduced Commonhold around a similar time but it never took off (at the very least it should have been the required process for all new build blocks of flats) and virtually doesn't exist.

This all sounds extremely smart to me. What's the catch?

You can probably argue that since the seller has to pay for a Scottish Home Report to market the home (essentially an Energy Performance Certificate and Homebuyer Report) that this initial upfront cost might be off-putting to sellers so fewer properties come onto the market but you can also spin this as a feature, not a bug, since only serious sellers will pay it.

And with the leasehold replacement, it's arguably more fiddly (less so for houses turned into 2 flats) when you want to get communal maintenance or repair work done as you need a majority of flat owners to agree (unless essential repairs). So you potentially have the general upkeep being ignored until the problem becomes too big to ignore (and more expensive to sort compared to being nipped in the bud earlier) or something like ground floor flat owners complaining about being asked to contribute to repairs of the lifts etc. Even a modest block of flats might have 30 different people, but some of the new builds would mean hundreds of people communicating amongst each other.

The system basically eliminates Gazumping and also pretty much estate agents too since the conveyancing solicitor tends to market the property.

All you had to do was say "the system eliminates estate agents" and I'd be won over

Tomous wrote:

Grumpy David wrote:

Tomous wrote:

Grumpy David wrote:There's a lot to be said for the Scottish method of buying / selling houses.

You get a Scottish Home Report which confirms the market value so you don't have the risk of the lender down valuing the home. You can buy over this amount but if it's say 200k value and you want to offer 205k but have a 10% deposit, it's 20k + 5k extra, rather than then the lender giving you 90% of 205k which does take some of the heat out the market.

It also is a Homebuyer Report, not the useless mortgage valuation report so you get a lengthy document to review. And it's much trickier to pull out of a purchase after your offer is accepted.

Plus they abolished the much hated leasehold almost 20 years ago. The UK introduced Commonhold around a similar time but it never took off (at the very least it should have been the required process for all new build blocks of flats) and virtually doesn't exist.

This all sounds extremely smart to me. What's the catch?

You can probably argue that since the seller has to pay for a Scottish Home Report to market the home (essentially an Energy Performance Certificate and Homebuyer Report) that this initial upfront cost might be off-putting to sellers so fewer properties come onto the market but you can also spin this as a feature, not a bug, since only serious sellers will pay it.

And with the leasehold replacement, it's arguably more fiddly (less so for houses turned into 2 flats) when you want to get communal maintenance or repair work done as you need a majority of flat owners to agree (unless essential repairs). So you potentially have the general upkeep being ignored until the problem becomes too big to ignore (and more expensive to sort compared to being nipped in the bud earlier) or something like ground floor flat owners complaining about being asked to contribute to repairs of the lifts etc. Even a modest block of flats might have 30 different people, but some of the new builds would mean hundreds of people communicating amongst each other.

The system basically eliminates Gazumping and also pretty much estate agents too since the conveyancing solicitor tends to market the property.

All you had to do was say "the system eliminates estate agents" and I'd be won over

I saved the best for last!

BID0 wrote:

Moggy wrote:

BID0 wrote:

Moggy wrote:

BID0 wrote:You should have your current place sold AND have a mortgage offered by a bank before you go looking at a house and put an offer in otherwise it can cause a chain to collapse.

Exactly, people should sell their homes and be living in the streets before moving to another place!

I don't know what that's meant to mean?

You don't move out until contracts are exchanged ready for the completion stage which normally takes 1-2 weeks for moving day.

You said we should have a place sold before looking at another property.

It's ridiculous to restrict viewings to people who already have an offer on the table. I understand people don't want to be in lengthy chains, but the process will fall down just as easily if people are not allowed to even view a property until they've got a buyer for their property.

An accepted offer is Sold - STC (subject to contract)

You have 2 offers for your property £200k and £201k. You accept the offer for £201k.
You then get the bank to credit check you to get your previously mortgage offer accepted for £80k.
You have a £281k budget and look at properties up to that price.

Yes I understand that.

Waiting until my property is STC is great for me. It's not great for my buyer though is it? "Thanks for offering to buy my property! I accept! Now hold on while I view 200 houses, take some time to decide where I want to live and attempt to get an offer accepted, cheers babes!".

Tomous wrote:

Grumpy David wrote:

Tomous wrote:

Grumpy David wrote:There's a lot to be said for the Scottish method of buying / selling houses.

You get a Scottish Home Report which confirms the market value so you don't have the risk of the lender down valuing the home. You can buy over this amount but if it's say 200k value and you want to offer 205k but have a 10% deposit, it's 20k + 5k extra, rather than then the lender giving you 90% of 205k which does take some of the heat out the market.

It also is a Homebuyer Report, not the useless mortgage valuation report so you get a lengthy document to review. And it's much trickier to pull out of a purchase after your offer is accepted.

Plus they abolished the much hated leasehold almost 20 years ago. The UK introduced Commonhold around a similar time but it never took off (at the very least it should have been the required process for all new build blocks of flats) and virtually doesn't exist.

This all sounds extremely smart to me. What's the catch?

You can probably argue that since the seller has to pay for a Scottish Home Report to market the home (essentially an Energy Performance Certificate and Homebuyer Report) that this initial upfront cost might be off-putting to sellers so fewer properties come onto the market but you can also spin this as a feature, not a bug, since only serious sellers will pay it.

And with the leasehold replacement, it's arguably more fiddly (less so for houses turned into 2 flats) when you want to get communal maintenance or repair work done as you need a majority of flat owners to agree (unless essential repairs). So you potentially have the general upkeep being ignored until the problem becomes too big to ignore (and more expensive to sort compared to being nipped in the bud earlier) or something like ground floor flat owners complaining about being asked to contribute to repairs of the lifts etc. Even a modest block of flats might have 30 different people, but some of the new builds would mean hundreds of people communicating amongst each other.

The system basically eliminates Gazumping and also pretty much estate agents too since the conveyancing solicitor tends to market the property.

All you had to do was say "the system eliminates estate agents" and I'd be won over

A bunch of pretentious old men playing at running the world. But the world left them behind long ago.

Buying a place in a high demand area in Scotland is a strawberry floating nightmare though. I once bid 20% over the asking price for a property and still wasn't the top buyer.

Moggy wrote:

BID0 wrote:

Moggy wrote:

BID0 wrote:

Moggy wrote:

BID0 wrote:You should have your current place sold AND have a mortgage offered by a bank before you go looking at a house and put an offer in otherwise it can cause a chain to collapse.

Exactly, people should sell their homes and be living in the streets before moving to another place!

I don't know what that's meant to mean?

You don't move out until contracts are exchanged ready for the completion stage which normally takes 1-2 weeks for moving day.

You said we should have a place sold before looking at another property.

It's ridiculous to restrict viewings to people who already have an offer on the table. I understand people don't want to be in lengthy chains, but the process will fall down just as easily if people are not allowed to even view a property until they've got a buyer for their property.

An accepted offer is Sold - STC (subject to contract)

You have 2 offers for your property £200k and £201k. You accept the offer for £201k.
You then get the bank to credit check you to get your previously mortgage offer accepted for £80k.
You have a £281k budget and look at properties up to that price.

Yes I understand that.

Waiting until my property is STC is great for me. It's not great for my buyer though is it? "Thanks for offering to buy my property! I accept! Now hold on while I view 200 houses, take some time to decide where I want to live and attempt to get an offer accepted, cheers babes!".

Good luck with your move. And I mean that in a genuine non passive aggressive way!

Moggy wrote:

BID0 wrote:

Moggy wrote:

BID0 wrote:

Moggy wrote:

BID0 wrote:You should have your current place sold AND have a mortgage offered by a bank before you go looking at a house and put an offer in otherwise it can cause a chain to collapse.

Exactly, people should sell their homes and be living in the streets before moving to another place!

I don't know what that's meant to mean?

You don't move out until contracts are exchanged ready for the completion stage which normally takes 1-2 weeks for moving day.

You said we should have a place sold before looking at another property.

It's ridiculous to restrict viewings to people who already have an offer on the table. I understand people don't want to be in lengthy chains, but the process will fall down just as easily if people are not allowed to even view a property until they've got a buyer for their property.

An accepted offer is Sold - STC (subject to contract)

You have 2 offers for your property £200k and £201k. You accept the offer for £201k.
You then get the bank to credit check you to get your previously mortgage offer accepted for £80k.
You have a £281k budget and look at properties up to that price.

Yes I understand that.

Waiting until my property is STC is great for me. It's not great for my buyer though is it? "Thanks for offering to buy my property! I accept! Now hold on while I view 200 houses, take some time to decide where I want to live and attempt to get an offer accepted, cheers babes!".

You should already have an idea of where you want to live though and what your criteria is if you're prepared? Finding a property you want to buy isn't that long a process unless you have really specific requirements. Most people don't look at more than 5-10 before committing, we're talking weeks not months and months usually. The internet especially makes it very easy to find places.

Tomous wrote:

Moggy wrote:

BID0 wrote:

Moggy wrote:

BID0 wrote:

Moggy wrote:

BID0 wrote:You should have your current place sold AND have a mortgage offered by a bank before you go looking at a house and put an offer in otherwise it can cause a chain to collapse.

Exactly, people should sell their homes and be living in the streets before moving to another place!

I don't know what that's meant to mean?

You don't move out until contracts are exchanged ready for the completion stage which normally takes 1-2 weeks for moving day.

You said we should have a place sold before looking at another property.

It's ridiculous to restrict viewings to people who already have an offer on the table. I understand people don't want to be in lengthy chains, but the process will fall down just as easily if people are not allowed to even view a property until they've got a buyer for their property.

An accepted offer is Sold - STC (subject to contract)

You have 2 offers for your property £200k and £201k. You accept the offer for £201k.
You then get the bank to credit check you to get your previously mortgage offer accepted for £80k.
You have a £281k budget and look at properties up to that price.

Yes I understand that.

Waiting until my property is STC is great for me. It's not great for my buyer though is it? "Thanks for offering to buy my property! I accept! Now hold on while I view 200 houses, take some time to decide where I want to live and attempt to get an offer accepted, cheers babes!".

You should already have an idea of where you want to live though and what your criteria is if you're prepared? Finding a property you want to buy isn't that long a process unless you have really specific requirements. Most people don't look at more than 5-10 before committing, we're talking weeks not months and months usually. The internet especially makes it very easy to find places.

I'll be moving 30 miles or more away from areas I am familiar with. I have some rough ideas of areas I'd like to look at, but would like to actually see houses (in the flesh, photos on rightmove aren't always a great guide) to narrow down where I decide to go.

I can understand not wanting time wasters, but it seems crazy to me to turn people away when you're trying to sell something.

Moggy wrote:

Tomous wrote:

Moggy wrote:

BID0 wrote:

Moggy wrote:

BID0 wrote:

Moggy wrote:

BID0 wrote:You should have your current place sold AND have a mortgage offered by a bank before you go looking at a house and put an offer in otherwise it can cause a chain to collapse.

Exactly, people should sell their homes and be living in the streets before moving to another place!

I don't know what that's meant to mean?

You don't move out until contracts are exchanged ready for the completion stage which normally takes 1-2 weeks for moving day.

You said we should have a place sold before looking at another property.

It's ridiculous to restrict viewings to people who already have an offer on the table. I understand people don't want to be in lengthy chains, but the process will fall down just as easily if people are not allowed to even view a property until they've got a buyer for their property.

An accepted offer is Sold - STC (subject to contract)

You have 2 offers for your property £200k and £201k. You accept the offer for £201k.
You then get the bank to credit check you to get your previously mortgage offer accepted for £80k.
You have a £281k budget and look at properties up to that price.

Yes I understand that.

Waiting until my property is STC is great for me. It's not great for my buyer though is it? "Thanks for offering to buy my property! I accept! Now hold on while I view 200 houses, take some time to decide where I want to live and attempt to get an offer accepted, cheers babes!".

You should already have an idea of where you want to live though and what your criteria is if you're prepared? Finding a property you want to buy isn't that long a process unless you have really specific requirements. Most people don't look at more than 5-10 before committing, we're talking weeks not months and months usually. The internet especially makes it very easy to find places.

I'll be moving 30 miles or more away from areas I am familiar with. I have some rough ideas of areas I'd like to look at, but would like to actually see houses (in the flesh, photos on rightmove aren't always a great guide) to narrow down where I decide to go.

I can understand not wanting time wasters, but it seems crazy to me to turn people away when you're trying to sell something.

100% you need to view properties in person but you can view a lot in a month if you're proactive, even if you're restricted to weekends only because of travel time etc.

I've known a few people who have got stuck in chains that have lasted months and months and then fallen apart. I don't know think it's crazy to want to try and get as good a foundation as possible before properly proceeding. Obviously chains can fall apart even if you have a buyer with a sold property but it's about people wanting to minimise the risk where they can.

We had a huge list of potential houses, and I used street view to check out the surrounding streets and areas. We then made a shortlist of 3, which we viewed on the same day, and bought the last one we saw that day.

Moggy wrote:

Tomous wrote:

Moggy wrote:

BID0 wrote:

Moggy wrote:

BID0 wrote:

Moggy wrote:

BID0 wrote:You should have your current place sold AND have a mortgage offered by a bank before you go looking at a house and put an offer in otherwise it can cause a chain to collapse.

Exactly, people should sell their homes and be living in the streets before moving to another place!

I don't know what that's meant to mean?

You don't move out until contracts are exchanged ready for the completion stage which normally takes 1-2 weeks for moving day.

You said we should have a place sold before looking at another property.

It's ridiculous to restrict viewings to people who already have an offer on the table. I understand people don't want to be in lengthy chains, but the process will fall down just as easily if people are not allowed to even view a property until they've got a buyer for their property.

An accepted offer is Sold - STC (subject to contract)

You have 2 offers for your property £200k and £201k. You accept the offer for £201k.
You then get the bank to credit check you to get your previously mortgage offer accepted for £80k.
You have a £281k budget and look at properties up to that price.

Yes I understand that.

Waiting until my property is STC is great for me. It's not great for my buyer though is it? "Thanks for offering to buy my property! I accept! Now hold on while I view 200 houses, take some time to decide where I want to live and attempt to get an offer accepted, cheers babes!".

You should already have an idea of where you want to live though and what your criteria is if you're prepared? Finding a property you want to buy isn't that long a process unless you have really specific requirements. Most people don't look at more than 5-10 before committing, we're talking weeks not months and months usually. The internet especially makes it very easy to find places.

I'll be moving 30 miles or more away from areas I am familiar with. I have some rough ideas of areas I'd like to look at, but would like to actually see houses (in the flesh, photos on rightmove aren't always a great guide) to narrow down where I decide to go.

I can understand not wanting time wasters, but it seems crazy to me to turn people away when you're trying to sell something.

I think with the market the way it is at the moment there's very little risk to agents turning away potential buyers. We're currently in the process of buying a house, and have been looking since the end of last year, and pretty much every house we viewed had near enough a full day's worth of viewings booked in within a day of first going up online, and most then had offers on within the week. I guess that might not be typical of everywhere but if you're looking in an area that's in demand then agents can afford to be choosy about who they arrange viewings with unfortunately.