Conveyancing / General Home Buying

We had the same thing! “Oooh we don’t rate [broker], you should speak to ours!”

Oh funny that.

Also once we had an offer accepted - “hmm, you should really work with our in house conveyancing to speed things up”.

No, I don’t think I will!

Tell me about it, although starting to wish I had, we’ve now been waiting over 4 weeks for the searches alone. I have to chase everyday otherwise we get nothing.

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Prepare yourself to be up sold building and contents insurance, life insurance, critical illness cover and so on…

Ignore them and use a price comparison website like you normally would for the cover you’d like. Building insurance generally being mandatory as part of your mortgage agreement.

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To be honest, at this point even if they offer me a coffee I’m going to turn it down…

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Sounds like Germany…

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:scream:

Is this specific to a particular area of the country? I’ve never heard of this practice before and we were looking for years before we bought our home. I must have visited 20 or so properties and affordability was never even mentioned, other than the agent making small talk during the viewing (we were quite young to be looking at reasonably expensive houses so as soon as I mentioned we owned a flat in London they took us a lot more seriously.)

This definitely hasn’t been the case for me. A few estate agents have asked if I “have considered the financial aspects” (whatever that means!) but none of them have ever asked for proof of a AIP

Same as above two. We were never asked for our agreement in principle either and we were looking at above average properties too.

We’re from the North though, not London if that makes a difference :man_shrugging:

I think it must be the area then and the number of people they’ve had look at properties just for the fun of it. I wasn’t allowed to book a slot without forwarding the AIP email which wasn’t really something I wanted to do at that stage but :woman_shrugging:

To be fair I’m in London and none of the properties we looked at were we asked about an AIP.

Though maybe if we were looking at significantly pricier properties they would!

I wasn’t asked for an AIP before viewings either (London too).

Given the stamp duty ‘holiday’ expires on 31 March 2021 (not sure why it’s being called a holiday, which to me implies you have longer to pay, rather than an exemption) there will be absolute carnage in the lead up.

If we’re frustrated with conveyancers NOW, imagine if you have thousands of pounds reliant on them beating that date. :persevere:

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Estate agents will ask to see proof of a mortgage in principle often if there is a booming market, local or national, for whatever reason. It’s a blunt tool to weed out the time-wasting curious, if there is more demand than the agent can handle for a property.

Of course, being estate agents, they might just be ar5eh0les.

Conveyancing is time-consuming, menial work for a solicitor. Often it will be passed to the office junior to complete, and the person you contact will have little day-to-day knowledge of your file, but they will be the person you’re expecting to answer questions, so it’s little wonder that the process is brain-liquifyingly awful for a buyer.

At least for a remortgage you’ll get the big company linked with the lender – my two simple remortgages have been relatively easy, whilst still being painfully slow and (mostly) paper-based, although my recent experience through HSBC involved a portal which worked well.

A solicitor you instruct yourself doesn’t have to be local, so if you can get a recommendation from friends or family, that’s a good start. Small local firms still pride themselves on ‘cradle to grave’ service so will be very happy to be recommended down through the generations. In my experience, the worst are semi-local or regional firms which have been formed by a couple of mergers. They’re the worst; not local small enough to be known in the district, and not big enough to simply have the employee numbers to be efficient.

Good luck!

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This whole thread puts me off owning property in the UK.

Saying that i’ve got a deposit saved thats held in NS&I income bonds for when I feel ready to buy a small flat in town hopefully. (I’d rather own with a mortgage than rent as I can sell it and get my money back)

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That’s not guaranteed. There are far more advantages too and it’s certainly worth the effort described in this topic.

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It’s worth owning even with all the fuss of buying a property. (You have no chance of getting the money back with renting so its better than no chance at all)

It also i’m guessing would feel super satisfying to own where I live rather than rent it.
It makes my £20k income feel tiny when i’ve done sums on living alone where now I save pretty much my whole income bar food, car insurance, petrol, car tax and some spending money.

Welcome to being an adult :sweat_smile: Bills and rent/mortgages take up most peoples salary and then you’ll have kids who soak up the rest :speak_no_evil:

Make the most of living at your parents while you’re still young to get the best kick-start in life.

One needs to consider that home ownership has a cost beyond the balance of the mortgage. It depends on the area, but in a crowded market like London renting is a brilliant thing. I’m paying less in rent today than I did 5 years ago and based on always current market prices I estimate my landlords have at best had their expenses covered.

In areas where almost everyone owns their own home the story might be different naturally.

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I’m in a area where most properties are owner occupied so it makes sense to own.

Rural area with a few small towns. While going on a daytrip to London is nice I feel I could not live there. (I enjoy driving too much)

Yes you have prices to worry about but it’s a long term thing owning a house or flat.
Do what makes sense for what part of the UK you live in.

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There’s also a mobility benefit to renting. The argument comes up a lot within my circle of friends (where I am the last to get close to buying).

Renting has greater flexibility and someone else is responsible for the problems. That’s worthwhile too :slight_smile:

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I can confirm. I rent out a flat in London. The mortgage is two thirds of the rent price, but after tax, (which admittedly you wouldn’t have to pay as an owner-occupier), service charge, ground rent, insurance and maintenance we just about break even. If the housing market was behaving as it did 20 or 30 years ago, I’d hang on to it but I think that is behind us now so we’ll be selling it as soon as the early repayment penalties for our fixed term mortgage drop off.

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