Selling/Buying under this circumstance

[phon]

Hi, We are thinking to sell our 1bed flat and buy a house around the area we are currently living.
As we are living here for myself, partner and 3yo, we would really need a bigger place.

We purchase the flat in 2016 and value doesn't seem to go up since as far as I see the market selling/buying price for similar property.We thought about the move last year but put a halt for it to wait to see what would happen to house price after Brexit..

If we are going to sell it now, we will also have to end up paying early repayment charge (4,000£), which my mortgage expires in Oct2021.

I am wondering if it's a good idea to go for selling and looking for a house now..?

A lot of mortgages can be ported? Might be worth looking into that?

as the person above mentioned, you can port your existing product to the new house, subject to affordability and credit...as long you are not reducing your mortgage to the point it will trigger the ERP.

Agree with the other two comments, we had an erp clause on our old mortgage and decided to sell. We ended up porting our mortgage and taking out a 2nd charge for the extra that we needed to upsize (not on a fixed term just a tracker mortgage). Once our erp clause expired on our old mortgage, we consolidated and remortgaged onto a new fixed term for the entire amount we needed, so we are now back to just the one mortgage (hope that makes sense). Look into it and see if this would be an option for you, if it isn't then personally i would wait until your erp expires as otherwise you are just losing £4K for nothing and that's a sizeable amount of money when you are moving!

Thank you for the comment. I dint know about porting so I will check with lender.
Regarding the timing, do you think the price for 1bed room flat would rise/down after Covid?

I was thinking not many properties are on market at the moment so it would be competitive, at the same time, not many buyers?

It's hard to say, I read an article the other day which said that nationwide have reported a drop in house prices. It's all relative...when house prices are higher yes you can get more when you sell your property but you will also have to pay more for your next property and vice versa. I have noticed a few new properties coming on recently in my area, I imagine lots of people may just want to stay put at the moment though.

Thanks! yes it's such a dilemma as my daughter is 3yo and I would like to move to the hose which have more space to play and garden, too rather than staying at the flat.

Another thing is I work for finance sector, worrying about job loss..;(

I totally understand that, I'm sure wanting to move to a larger property, with more outside space, has been made even more important to you as well since the lockdown. It's a worrying time isn't it and hard to know what to do for the best, I'm still furloughed from work myself until the end of July currently, then we will see what happens after that!

I would explore your options, at least you know then what would be your best move (no pun intended 🙈). You can always test the water and see what response you get by marketing your property, if it's not what you hoped for right now then withdraw it from the market and try again in a few months.

Thanks! yes it's difficult time.. we have been viewing properties since last year and was intended to put our flat on market but had to give up due to brexit.
Some estate agent charge a lot for selling as well. sorry this is the different topic but purple-brick seems less fee for selling, are they generally good?

I would avoid Purple Bricks like the plague. If you do a search on here of previous threads, they do not get a good press. You get what you pay for and you have to pay them upfront, therefore there is little incentive for them to work to get you a sale. You should be able to negotiate on the EA's fees though - how much do they charge locally to you?

Sorry I have no experience with purplebricks. We ended up selling and buying with a local agent to us, which dh found and it turned into a real saga 🙈 (they have since been taken to court and all sorts - not by us may I add but we did fall out with them and pay them less fees due to their failings) I would speak to friends and family and see if they can recommend anyone locally or tell you who to steer clear of through their personal experience.

Thank you! I see.. fees always reflect to the agent how they deal with, isn't it..? We had in touch with one of agents and their charge is 3000£ for selling, I thought it's a bit too much.
If we want to buy a house thorough the same agent selling our flat, do they normally discount on fees?

Sorry I know no one who has experienced this so wanted to know the idea from you guys!

We sold at the beginning of the year via the main local agent. They have an office on the high street and generally a large market share, ie marketing most of the houses for sale in the area.
To us this meant they knew the market well, would have potential buyers lined up and also gather footfall.
They charged 0.75% of the sale price. So this is a cost you will have to account for in your overall moving costs. In our case the bulk of the work by the agent was after the sale, as we heavily relied on them keeping the chain together, especially as our buyers decided to renegotiate 6 weeks down the line...

I never looked into purple bricks from a selling perspective. We did consider a couple of houses to buy via PB. It was a bit of a pain to arrange viewings as you had to create an online account and then select a time slot online, get that confirmed by the vendor etc etc. We weren't even able to see one of the houses, as none of their time slots suited us and it took ages to get a response. It worked out ok for the other house. but i must say in both cases, as there was no actual person like an agent helping to arrange the initial viewing, it took more time to get arranged. So you wouldn't get any spontaneous viewings.

OP the seller pays the EA fees so why would they discount their fees if you were selling and buying through them? There's no incentive for them to do so.

What percentage of the asking price is £3000? None of us can really judge whether those fees are high without knowing that.

Hi, the estate agent fee was £3000 for fixed price, selling flat £210K.
I'm still confused some agent do fixed price, others not.
What is the best to consider choosing estate agent when selling a property?

That's around 1.45%. You should find they all charge around the same % in the same area although they may have a minimum fee at a set figure alongside that.

You need to get at least EAs round to value and ask them how much they would market the place for and how much they would expect it to actually sell for. They should be able to show they have sold similar properties in the area and tell you what sale prices have been agreed.

Pick the EA you think will sell the place - remember the person doing viewings needs to be someone who will have a rapport with your target market and the EA will need to be capable of progressing the sale after a sale has been agreed. We wanted an individual who knew the house to be responsible for sales progression, not a call centre where you could get anyone dealing with it.

We used 'Sell my home' to sell our flat and they were fantastic. Only downside is I don't think we had as many viewings as we would have done with a physical EA as they tend to push buyers more towards your property. So, I don't know- we might have got a little more for it, but we would have paid 5-6k more in fees at least. In which case it probably did work out better.

We almost bought a house through purple bricks and I would avoid them like the plague. The vendor was given our mobile number and when things got tricky with the house (awful surveys then bank refused to give us a mortgage because the cellar was rotten, wet and structurally unsound) she took things very personally and accused us of messing her around. She felt that the house was full of character and that surveys were designed to scare buyers, that we should take her word for it and pay for the remedial works to her house.

After she withdrew from the sale (phew!!) Purple bricks kept sending me emails because I'd saved the house as a favourite telling me whenever a viewing was booked or any offer made for months until she changed agents. She dropped the price by 25k, had loads of viewings and not a single offer. Turns out other buyers were put off by the well in the wet cellar, unlike us idiots...

We went with a local agent who knew the area and the type of property well. Think the rate was 0.7%. I would look at who tends to have the market share for flats in your price bracket and see what they are quoting. We didn't use the same agent as we sold through, although they are always keen to do that. I don't think they offered a discount though. Ours was not fixed price it was a % of selling price. My concern with a fixed price, especially with that % would be that they would pressure you to sell for lower than market rates just to clear you from the books as they get the same amount regardless. We didn't pay anything until completion so try not to get tied in just in case they turn out to be awful. Some estate agents have a 12 week lock in period.

I would avoid purple bricks. EAs will usually negotiate fee|% - 1% is pretty typical atm although it does vary by area.

I have just sold mine (twice) and he similar questions to you.

I got 2 estate agents round to value the property and they pitched for the business. I knew I wanted to go with one guy but he was a little more expensive. He has earned that money by negotiating the purchase price more than the initial asking price so he has paid for himself really :)