Costs of moving - where does it come from?

[Coldhandscoldheart]

Obviously some things like removers fees are upfront from savings. We’re desperate to move, I’ve been looking at numbers and I think it’ll be £7000 minimum for solicitors, estate agents, LBTT etc and we simply don’t have that in savings.

I’m guessing we aren’t the only skinty people wanting to sell and buy, but how do people manage it?

We’re not talking very expensive houses, we are hoping ours would go for £115k and maybe to buy around £145k (although could technically afford mortgage up to £180k).

It’s doing my head in, I’m seeing obstacles everywhere, and that’s before we even get on to Brexit!

We moved nearly 3 years ago, from memory(!), we had to pay for survey and solicitors to start searches upfront. We didnt pay anthing else until the sale had completed, the solictor then deducted theirs fees and paid the estate agent and bank transfered us our remaining money......thats assuming that you have money left from the sale of your current house, otherwise you'll need to find the cash!

A bit upfront then the rest from the equity which gets taken out on completion. You might need a bigger mortgage.

If your looking at mortgages for 145 but could go up to 180, then there is plenty of wiggle room to add the 7k to the mortgage.

The 7k comes out of the equity in your current house, just meaning you need a slightly bigger mortgage for the new house. You'll need to pay a few bits upfront for searches etc but most can be paid upon completion. You don't need the money in cash up front

Oof, thank you. I thought it must be something like that, but I have so much in my head I couldn’t untangle it!

We are in process of moving.... so far I've had to pay £400 upfront for searches and will be paying £840 on Monday for the survey - this was the more expensive one of the two offered, other one is £200 and is just a valuation. The one we have gone for checks the building is free of defects etc. We had meeting with financial consultant today and other than removal fees there shouldn't be anymore to pay upfront, the rest will be sorted on completion and we will have what's left transferred to us!
All estate agents have mortgage advisers who work alongside them, we used the one from Cubitt and west they are called money matters direct and they are very clear and give you written info on what you need to pay and can organise all your mortgage too x

The first thing you need to know is how much equity have you got in your current house? E.g. You bought it for £100k on a 90% mortgage, so had a £10k deposit, and sell it for £115k which gives you £25k equity for a deposit in your new house plus moving costs. Subtract those costs e.g. £7k leaving you with. £18k deposit. ( assuming you buy a house that doesn't need anything spending in it?) therefore if you get a 90% mortgage again you could buy a house for up to £180k or put a bigger deposit down on a cheaper house to get a better rate and lower repayments on your new mortgage.

This is where lots of people get caught out
My niece keeps on about moving but she hasn’t got a clue of the costs involved before you’ve even moved in ... I think a good investment if you can do it though is a private survey .... we was recommended to do this and we’ve done it twice but get a reputable surveyor of course

We are in Scotland, so pay for a homebuyers report, usually about £400, then that’s also available for any house you look at, so don’t have to worry so much about paying for surveys on houses that you don’t buy.
We have a mortgage advisor already who is fantastic (& may well have explained all this already
Really need to spend time on getting the right house next time though, cannot go through this again any time soon. Cant decide whether to move away from an area we really like for better houses.

Where in Scotland are you? I am in scotland too, We are going through it just now, have just got an offer on our house, it was up for almost 3 months though. We haven't paid anything yet apart from the home report which was £360, the rest will be deducted from our sale via the solicitor. Now it's the fun bit of finding a new home! X

Sorry meant to add, for the price of your house I think your estimating a bit high. The one we are selling is similar price to you and buying around 180-200k. For solicitors, estate agent and lbtt were about 4k in total x

Oh that’s good to know. I found some numbers online and worst-case-scenarioed them. Although to be fair, I don’t have £4000 in savings either!

Really , we’re so desperate to leave I’m convinced something will put a spanner in the works.

Yep, made a similar thread last week. Moving cost are extortionate, the killers are the conveyancing (2-3k) and stamp duty (7500k). That is one of the primary reasons that the market is dead in many areas imo (not brexit). I have a sneaky feeling that the stamp duty tax will be reformed in the next budget which will help no end. Boris has signaled that is his intention but obviously the timing is the real question mark

You need to get quotes from removal companies too. The time of year massively affects their pricing. Prices rocket at times of high demand (school hols etc)

We just got a mortgage and would only mortgage us based on the property valuation on home report so we offered 4k over asking price but that had to come out of savings so I don't know how people are adding that to their mortgage offer? Also we couldn't get anywhere near a 90% mortgage. In Scotland too.

@jomalone no you definitely can't add anything over the home report value to your mortgage. I wish that was the case and I maybe wouldn't of been outbidded a few times lol. I think it works different in England to here though, not sure.

The equity in our house, it depends how much we sell for as to whether it'll be enough! Upfront costs would be valuation, solicitor's deposit, estate agent's initial small fee and removals. That's about £1000 for us (as we'd only rent a van). Stamp duty pisses me off, and the waiver for first time buyers came in months after we bought our first home 😡😡 I regret not waiting longer to move straight into our forever home, I panicked thinking house prices were rising faster than we could save, technically true, but the money we've made in the house is outweighed by the moving costs!!