House buying and mortgages

[Zhivago]

Any advice can anyone give?

We're literally in the middle of the process... but god isn't this stuff fun. Nothing like signing contracts worth half a mil, eh?

Skipped on the real estate agent and still managed to get the agreed price lower than the subsequent valuation we had to pay for. Talk about satisfying.

[SerjeantWildgoose]

Don't cut corners on the survey. Get the best survey you can afford and go back into bat if there are any structural issues that need to be sorted. Either get the seller to fix them or, better, barter the costs off the price - that way you're not paying mortgage interest on the cost of fixing things that need to be fixed anyway.

[Zhivago]

Don't cut corners on the survey. Get the best survey you can afford and go back into bat if there are any structural issues that need to be sorted. Either get the seller to fix them or, better, barter the costs off the price - that way you're not paying mortgage interest on the cost of fixing things that need to be fixed anyway.

Hmm interesting. We did do the survey, including a check for asbestos, hopefully the guy didn't miss anything...

[Sandydragon]

Make sure that any major changes to the structure of the house have been approved by th local authority. Your solicitor should pick up on it, but make sure the certificates are in place and if the seller doesn’t have a certificate, make sure he gets one.

[kk67]

If you suddenly get a huge cash injection and you can screw them,....then do it.