First time buyer help.

[Jennywallpaper]

Hi, I was hoping someone could give me some advice please?
DH and I currently rent, we've been in our current house for 12 years and our landlord has decided he wants to sell, we have been looking at our options and with the 95% mortgages coming back we would be in a position to buy.
We spoke to the estate agent dealing with our home, and put an offer to the landlord but he turned it down.

We thought because we only have 2 months to move we would just find somewhere else to rent in the short term but there is very little available and the only one we've seen that we like is £100 p/m more than our current rent.

So I was thinking we should maybe offer the landlord more and stay where we are. I really don't like the thought of putting more money into renting but I'm not sure if this is the right time to buy. Any help or advice would be much appreciated.

Right firstly don't panic. Secondly do you really love the house you are renting & not want to move ? Thirdly if your landlord won't sell it to you will they be happy to allow you to rent until the house is sold which will give you time to get your act together. When l had to decide what to do re house buying / selling l wrote out the for and against points and weighed them up. Good luck OP .

@Mrsmadevans

Right firstly don't panic. Secondly do you really love the house you are renting & not want to move ? Thirdly if your landlord won't sell it to you will they be happy to allow you to rent until the house is sold which will give you time to get your act together. When l had to decide what to do re house buying / selling l wrote out the for and against points and weighed them up. Good luck OP .

Thanks Mrsmadevans, its been a real headache since we found out he wants to sell. He said he'd be happy to sell to us, but he just wants more than what we offered. We do love it here, we have 2 dc and it's in a great location for their school and for our work. We would like something a little bigger but realistically i don't think we could afford it for awhile. I'm not sure about him letting us stay until its sold I think he's quite keen to get it sold as soon as possible and we have to leave by May. We are going to view the one to rent tomorrow but I know its not worth the extra money and keep thinking that could be going towards a mortgage or even savings for a higher deposit.

I would be surprised if you had to leave by may. I thought all eviction notice periods were now 6 months due to corona. And then maybe another year to go through the courts.

No one will buy until you have left.

He won't be able to sell it for a long time.

Unless your contract is due to end in may, he legally needs to give you 6 months notice to leave. I would push back on the deadline as if he’s just sprung this on you he’s breaking the law

@MadeForThis

I would be surprised if you had to leave by may. I thought all eviction notice periods were now 6 months due to corona. And then maybe another year to go through the courts.

No one will buy until you have left.

He won't be able to sell it for a long time.

I think our lease had ended so because of covid we have 12 weeks rather than the 4 we would have had. The estate agents asked if we would let them in to take photos and do viewing but we said no.

We don't really want to leave but its more about if we can or should offer more than what we have to buy it. There isn't really many properties for sale within our budget and the thought of putting more money into renting is just horrible.

Have you looked to see what other properties in the same area are going for OP? There may be a street price ceiling . I also wonder if you can get a mortgage broker to sort things out realisitically for you too.
I don't think you need to panic atm, your landlord is trying it on with you l think.

@Mrsmadevans

Have you looked to see what other properties in the same area are going for OP? There may be a street price ceiling . I also wonder if you can get a mortgage broker to sort things out realisitically for you too. I don't think you need to panic atm, your landlord is trying it on with you l think.

There is one other property for sale on our street and it is on for £135,000. We offered £128,000 for ours and he turned it down as he wants £130,000 minimum. He hasn't seen the house since we moved in, and I feel like it needs some work done.

I think I'm just worried about the 95% mortgage and what our repayments would be, we have been pre approved for a mortgage up to £135,000 but obviously we would like to keep the repayments as low as we can.

But then when I seen the price of rent now I think we'd be better buying.

I'm in Northern Ireland if that makes any difference.

Thanks everyone all the help so far!

Jesus just offer the extra £2k and stay put!

I think you really need some proper advice . Is there anyone close to you who can talk you through this ? Someone who has bought several houses in the past? If not then is it worth you having a word with the estate agent or the mortgage broker? Whenever we have bought a house we have been very thorough & weighed all the points for and against up. Is he leaving you carpets, furniture, outbuildings, appliances ? If so if you add the moving fees to it then that may be worth the extra 2k , give it a good think. Good luck!

We're in Belfast OP and have just bought our first house a few weeks ago. When we were searching for a place in November houses were going so, so fast and for well above asking.

We ended up in a bidding war for ours and had to go £10k over the asking price. There were some I requested
viewings for and when I rang up they'd say it's already got an offer at 10/15k over so don't bother viewing if you can't beat that.

Has the landlord had a proper valuation? And is it on the market yet? I would say (if you / the valuation think it's worth it) to offer the difference he is looking for if you love the house. It's a bit different to England here as we can't find out the price other local houses actually sold for like they can over there so we were a bit bewildered about how to know the real value of things so just bit the bullet til we got an offer accepted finally!

As an aside, we still have 6 weeks left on our rental lease and they just put the ad on to re-let yesterday, they're putting the rent up a good chunk and within 3 hours of the post going up we had a man knocking on the door asking about the house/area as they are desperately trying to find somewhere to rent and said not much available so really competitive at the minute, he was straight off to the estate agent after, so I'd try very hard to stay put where you are!

If you put the details in here www.moneysavingexpert.com/mortgages/mortgage-rate-calculator/ you should get a good idea of how much repayments will be (I put our details in and it was bang on). If you bought it for 130k with a 5% deposit your mortgage amount would be 123,500, our (rubbish) interest rate with Halifax as FTB is 3.1% and the mortgage fee was 999 which we added on to the mortgage - you can probably expect similar interest/fees to give you an idea of comparable numbers to put in.

Remember to factor in rates and buildings insurance as well as you don't have to pay those when you're renting. You can get an idea of what the rates are from Land & Property Services, ours are around 90 a month and our buildings insurance was 260 (slightly cheaper if you pay upfront instead of monthly).

So as well as needing 6.5k deposit, we also had to pay 200 for the mortgage application (the banks valuation fee), 450 for a homebuyers survey (although you probably know all the problems with property anyway, but probably worth doing still?) and the solicitor fees were about 1600. I'm not sure if the solicitor fees are relative to purchase price but ours was 205k so if it is relative you might have cheaper solicitor fees.

I'm not in NI, but am aware where I live that a mortgage is often only half what you are paying in rent.
Seriously, if it is a case of finding an extra £2000 I'd just pay it.
You'll spend that in new deposits, moving costs, and the amount extra you pay in rent over what you'd pay for a mortgage very very quickly.

@AppleStars

If you put the details in here www.moneysavingexpert.com/mortgages/mortgage-rate-calculator/ you should get a good idea of how much repayments will be (I put our details in and it was bang on). If you bought it for 130k with a 5% deposit your mortgage amount would be 123,500, our (rubbish) interest rate with Halifax as FTB is 3.1% and the mortgage fee was 999 which we added on to the mortgage - you can probably expect similar interest/fees to give you an idea of comparable numbers to put in.

Remember to factor in rates and buildings insurance as well as you don't have to pay those when you're renting. You can get an idea of what the rates are from Land & Property Services, ours are around 90 a month and our buildings insurance was 260 (slightly cheaper if you pay upfront instead of monthly).

So as well as needing 6.5k deposit, we also had to pay 200 for the mortgage application (the banks valuation fee), 450 for a homebuyers survey (although you probably know all the problems with property anyway, but probably worth doing still?) and the solicitor fees were about 1600. I'm not sure if the solicitor fees are relative to purchase price but ours was 205k so if it is relative you might have cheaper solicitor fees.

Thank you so much for all this, the link hasn't came up. Is there a website I can use? The 260 for your building insurance, is that per year?

The price of rent has gotten so expensive, we've been quite lucky as ours hasn't increased to much over the years but to go somewhere new it would cost so much more.

Dh and I have been talking about it alot tonight and going over our options, and we're going to offer the £130,000. I just hope the landlord accepts it now!

Thanks so much!!

Hope you get it OP fingers crossed

Good luck!!! I hope he accepts!! It would be much easier for him if he sells to you.

Ah sorry about the link, if you search for Money Saving Expert mortgage calculator it's really helpful! The buildings insurance is for the year yes, it was a bit cheaper to pay a year in one go than paying monthly, I think monthly was something like £24 a month which is about £30 more a year but I can't remember the exact number.

Gosh for two grand op just offer it if you can get the money together, irs going to cost you a shit load more to move and rent again.

PS fingers crossed for you getting the offer accepted, I would have thought it would save him a lot of hassle as he wouldn't have to pay for marketing the property for sale, but some people are just awkward! Hope it all works out for you

Has it been valued? What kind of condition was the house that sold for 132 in, in comparison to yours? Obviously if he can sell it privately to you it will save him fees with the estate agent.

@Scbchl

Has it been valued? What kind of condition was the house that sold for 132 in, in comparison to yours? Obviously if he can sell it privately to you it will save him fees with the estate agent.

The estate agents we rent it through came out to do a valuation last week, and told us 125,000- 130,000 that's why we offered 128,000. It seems he thinks he'd get closer to 135,000 on the open market but I thought it would have been easier and cheaper for him to sell it without having to put it on the market. I'm not sure about the condition of the other one, it hasn't been listed yet, the estate agent told us it was going on for 135,000.

@AppleStars

Ah sorry about the link, if you search for Money Saving Expert mortgage calculator it's really helpful! The buildings insurance is for the year yes, it was a bit cheaper to pay a year in one go than paying monthly, I think monthly was something like £24 a month which is about £30 more a year but I can't remember the exact number.

Thank you so much, this has all helped so much! I checked the calculator and the mortgage works out about the same as our current rent. I think we'd be mad to start renting somewhere else now.

In honesty by the time you've moved and all costs and purchases to move plus needing new fixtures and fittings like blinds etc. You may as well pay extra even if it's more than the £2000. Our removals were nearly 2000.

I also calculated that an extra £1000 to our mortgage was £20 a month. It really won't change it by that much. And if that makes it too expensive you may not actually be in a position to buy.

95% mortgages are only just being released and the products are limited and will have various criteria to meet to be eligable. Speak to a broker to get proper advice as to what you could get.

Agree with PP - he's wanting £2K more than you've offered and you can afford that it seems. Rather than the costs of moving plus higher rent, it's a no brainer to me.