Feel so down about trying to buy a house

[Heyheyheygoodbye]

DH and I have been saving like mad for what feels like forever, and hope to reach our goal of around £20K in the next couple of months. We are also incredibly lucky in that PIL are going to help us a bit too, as they already have helped BIL.

I was feeling really good about our savings etc. I'd done a budget to look at our affordability and things like that, and I sat down to start crunching some numbers and looked up the fees guide on MSE www.moneysavingexpert.com/mortgages/mortgage-fees-stamp-duty

Now I just feel like crying! All of those fees plus the stamp duty is going to eat up almost all our savings, and any help from PIL will have to BE our deposit, instead of bulking it up, so the houses we've been eyeing are now back out of our budget again.

I know I'm lucky to be in this position at all - it's not so many years ago DH and I were literally using pennies to buy groceries the week before payday - but I just feel really deflated and crap. I feel so stupid and naive for not realising how high the fees were going to be. I knew BIL's fees were high but I thought that was because he bought in London!

Ugh!! Feel an idiot :(

Fees for us only totalled about £4-5k,

Most of the mortgage ones are added to the mortgage, not paid up front.

So you pay your solicitors fees (ring round, massive variation in prices) land registry (which we paid to solicitors in with their charges) ours totalled approx 1.5k. then stamp duty and surveyors. I can't see how your fees would come in at 20k?

Neither can I. I think you're being too pessimistic, OP.

My stamp duty is 17.5k... Survey, searches, brokers fee, solicitors fees... How can't you see that fees would reach 20k?

I added up the fees on the guide I linked to...I'm working on the higher end to be safe. BUT DH has just had a look at my workings and gently pointed out I had misunderstood stamp duty so it won't be quite as bad as I thought But still over 10K if I add them all up!

I also didn't know some or all of the fees could be added to the mortgage. I'm usually pretty hot on personal finance but I'm evidently a total idiot at this mortgage stuff.

For stamp duty to be 17.5k the house would need to be valued at over 500k, my apologies for not working on a basis of a first time buyer looking at a 500k house.

I'm using my own ignorance in that our 3 bed house cost approx 2k stamp duty so basing my calculations on my own experience.

You can add arrangement fees to the mortgage which can be as much as £2k, but I don't think you can add any others.

Do you get any perks for being first time buyers wrt to stamp duty? I recall something about that in one of the budgets.

10k is more realistic.

I wish Cucumber

No, I had misunderstood how the sliding scale works. Idiot me.

I don't know chica I will look that up!

I'm a FTB, and I'm putting 10K aside for fees and moving. I think this is on the high end of estimates, but better that side rather than find I don't have enough.

Will you qualify for any of the government schemes for FTBuyers? We don't, unfortunately, as live in an expensive part of the country that isn't London, so all the threshholds are too low.

We have looked at a few new-builds that qualify Wuffle but so far, in our budget at least, they're all tiny and soulless and mashed into a corner of an otherwise-grim area. We'll keep looking though!

I would budget at least £10k. We moved last year (wee v lucky to buy 3 bed semi in Zone 3/4 London) and including commission charges, stamp duty, legal fees etc etc we shelled out over £20k

It's really interesting to read this. DP has just opened a help to buy ISA and as soon as my income is stable I will be contributing to saving too. We hadn't even thought about the fees! Maybe it'll take us a bit longer than we'd first estimated :/

I know Faith I don't know why it isn't more commonly spoken about! MSE guides are really helpful though :)

Ugh Goosey London is such a bind...we lived there for six years and had a ball but the prices!!

Put some of the fees on a 0% credit card then pay it off after you have bought (provided your budget isn't too tight) if possible. Most of the fees don't have to be paid upfront and are at completion (although a solicitor will usually ask for searches to be paid upfront but this is only £100s usually). The only evidence that I remember being important to provide is that there is enough to satisfy a lender that you have a deposit (agreement in principle) and you may need to provide evidence for that. From offer to sale could take 3 months - so enough time to squirrel a bit more away? Also arrangement fees adding to the mortgage may not be the best in the long term (ie. you pay interest over many years) but sometimes needs must. I just googled 'can I pay stamp duty on a credit card' and you can - there is a caveat though; see
www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/mortgageshome/article-2991881/Can-solicitor-fees-stamp-duty-credit-card-protect-deposit-extra-borrowing-jeopardise-mortgage.html
but if you are expecting a lump sum in the near future I can't see that this would be a problem and would be a reasonable solution to cope with cash flow. I simply don't believe that many lenders check after completion as this article suggests but I am prepared to be proved wrong.

solicitors fees: buying a £500k house should be about £800 MAX for a competent solicitor. That is not a conveyancying body shop and not a useless old high street codger who takes a week to deal with any correspondence.

then add search fees (defined by your council)

stamp duty - is what it is

survey fees: again £500 odd, purchase only

removals; cut costs by decluttering and packing yourself, gathering boxes on freecycle and from supermarkets. Do not underestimate the time and effort involved.

By the time we found a house and the sale went through we had managed to save the stamp duty of 1k , survey £500 and solicitors fees of £800 by continuing to save as we had when we were saving for the mortgage. We hired a van and moved ourselves to save more. We only had a pay a small part of the solicitors fees up front for the searches iirc I think it was a few hundred. The mortgage fee of 1k was rolled into the mortgage. I do appreciate we don't live in London and our 3bed semi in a nice area was 130k, so 1300k stamp duty under the old rules- but every bit will help. We luckily bought off a lovely couple who didn't need to rush the sale and we're happy for us to move a bit slower although it wouldn't have moved a lot faster if we had pushed it tbh(3 m).

Don't despair you are nearly there and then you'll be skint for fixing and decorating the house! We are currently , once again, practising frugality for a new bathroom!

Oops that was £1300 stamp duty. Or 1300k!!

Just phone a solicitor about the proposed house purchase and in 20 secs they will list all the legal and stamp duty costs for you, and give you the total figure. Worth checking that?

I am reading and appreciate all the advice! DH and I worked hard to get out of debt so I won't be using cards for anything; but it's a good point that it'll take a while to go through and in that time we'll keep saving so will have a little more!

Once we are actually ready to purchase I will of course call a solicitor but at the moment it's still hypothetical...in a couple of months though I will be glad I posted here as everyone's experience and advice is really useful, thank you!

We bought our two bed starter home in September. Our fees were £1000 solicitors (including searches yada yada), £300 homebuyer's report, about £1200 stamp duty, and £250 for lender's valuation fee. No removals as we did it ourselves. Our house was 210K and we put down a 10% deposit, so total spend was nearly 21.5K.

I found the MSE guide was on the more pessimistic side.