The first thing you need to do is to talk to a broker and find out your affordability. You can generate one online via something like L&C but those numbers are honestly pie in the sky. The last figure they churned out for us was only 4k less than the previous, and rates have gone from 4.99 to 6.56 since. They also previously told us we could get at least 50k more than any lender was actually prepared to lend us - and that was including stretching the term to 33 years!! Actually, I think the difference was 83k more than we could be loaned.
So, talk to a broker who will ask lots of questions and plug it into a system and generate a real number, an agreement in principle.
You can still do this via L&C - they do get good rates, but they need to put all your numbers and particular details into their systems. It's the online churn out immediate agreement in principle that is a bunch of nonsense. So a phone call is needed.
Then when you have your number, start looking at houses. Try to look quite a bit under the maximum they will loan you, if you can.
It's definitely not a great time to buy if you have to stretch your affordability.
If you can still afford to buy at the current interest rate and also afford quite a bit on top of that, you could consider going on a tracker mortgage, in the hope that rates will fall.
Trackers seem to still have fixed terms, i.e. two years, but if the BoE put their rates up, your mortgage will go up, but if they go down, your mortgage will go down. It will change every month.
When that two years are done, you can look at getting a longer term fix at a lower rate.
I think the BoE will put rates up two more times this year and then it's likely to stop. I think they will stay at a similar rate for probably a year, then slowly fall.
I am not expecting big falls. If we get up to 5.75% this year I will be quite pleased if it falls to 5% within the next 2 years.
6% ish is around average for a BoE interest rate.
Remember your mortgage will cost more than that.
We will probably wait til rates hit their peak and then start looking. I would expect house prices, at least where we are looking, to then start falling a bit more quickly than they are right now.
That's when we will be looking. We will go on a tracker - but it's important to note that the only reason we will be doing that is because we will probably buy at under 2/3rds of what banks will lend us, so we will have a lot of wriggle room with affordability. We also have no kids and could cut our expenses in half if we really tried.
There probably will be masses of people looking when interest rates fall - we just want to avoid bun fights because I don't want the stress, so will try to buy when nobody else wants to.
If tracker mortgages are too much or too much of a risk and your broker advises you get a two year fix, just remember that there are usually fees - often 1k - every single time you need a new mortgage term. Sometimes they charge extra fees on top too. Valuation, and others I forget. So factor repeated fees into your finances. Sometimes it doesn't make sense to keep paying the fees every two years if interest rates have only fallen a teeny bit.
Locations come after you know your budget.