Cost of moving house!

[BumbleBeeBumbum]

Would love to move in the next few years (ideally tomorrow but I know that’s not possible haha).

We don’t have a huge amount of savings at the moment. My partner says that we can pay stamp duty, solicitor and estate agent fees with the equity from our house. But is this true? Are there other costs to consider? And are there costs we would need to pay up front such as surveys etc? I really don’t know much about this as our first house is a new build. Any info I’d be grateful for

We are currently moving (jumps with in abandoned glee).

Yes, to an extent those fees can be paid from whatever is left over from paying your mortgage off on the house you are selling - assuming you make a profit. This is also assuming you aren’t using any equity/profit to use as a deposit on your next property. You cannot spend it twice! So you may have to save for stamp duty/estate agent/solicitor fees.

Mortgages can be ported and that may change things somewhat- as we’ve never done that, I can’t answer for any things that might change due to porting, that may change what can be paid out if the revenue from selling your home. Hopefully someone will come along and explain that.

expenses that have needed to be paid up front (before sale) if you are also buying are deposits for fees to the solicitor, search fees and any survey fees. For us this is currently sitting at around the £5k mark. (Just as an idea). However we are buying, moving in and then selling our current property as two seperate cash transactions.

If you decide to buy at an auction there will also be additional auction based fees.

selling/buying property is filled with unexpected expenditure, so it would be wise to have a good, separate fund of money over and above any deposit.

Say you have 100k of equity from your current house when you sell and you're buying a house that is 300k.

You essentially 'take' stamp duty and solicitor fees etc out of that- so say they come to 20k, you would then have 80k left so you'd then need to borrow 220k.

If that makes sense?!

Yep, we did this.i think we paid in £10k from savings too. You also have moving fees which is separate and somehow we had 2 mortgage payments in one pay period. No idea how that happened but I have a feeling we got some of that back actually.

You'd need some money upfront to pay for survey, and solicitors usually want you to pay for searches in advance (this cost us total £1k for both). but yes, you can 'take' the rest from your equity, but you'd have less for the deposit on your next place so the more you can save the better. you pay the stamp duty, rest of solicitors costs, and estate agent, when you exchange.

To add to others comments you also need to pay removal costs upfront.

@TheOneWithUnagi good catch! Have always moved ourselves, so completely forget that!

Yep it just came out of the equity

Depends on how much equity you have, and how much that means the cash contribution to the new house (ie deposit) is.

Also, if the new house is more expensive, and you aren't currently saving, will you be able to afford the higher repayment costs?

To answer your question, you can pay SDLT, EA fees, and the majority of solicitors fees from your equity. Your solicitor will usually require an amount upfront to begin the work (ours wanted £500 for the sale and purchase) and then topping up as and when required.

I will give you the breakdowns of what I was quoted as I have my emails open in case this is any good to you.

Purchase:
Legal fees - £1945
VAT on legal fees - £389
Bank Transfer fee - £35
Land registry fee - £150
Search Fees - £350 (estimated)
SDLT - £ (related to my purchase)

Sale:
Legal Fees - £1870
VAT on legal fees - £374
Land Registry fee - £16
Funds Transfer fee - £36

Misc Fees:
ID Verification fee - £48 each
Bankrupcy Search - £3 each
Estate Agent fee - £ (related to my purchase)

The other fees to consider are:
Survey fees - we did a L3 on a rickety old house so it cost us £1000 and needs to be paid when its done.
mover costs / van hire costs
indemnity insurances if you need them for your sale
ERC fees on mortgage if you cant port it
mortgage broker fees
mortgage arrangement fees with the bank / valutation fees (these can usually be added to the mortgage cost)

Remember though that people are weird and pull out of purchases for no reason which means that if you are unlucky like me and your buyer walks away on exchange day you get the joys of paying even more money than this so make sure you can afford to go through all these costs x 2. I am having the liberty of paying for 95% sale cost legal fees on the failed sale plus a whole new set of sale cost legal fees! Luckily my purchase is still in the game otherwise I'd have lost nearly £6K. I guess what I'm saying is make sure you have plenty of equity or save up for the unexpected (Yes I'm still bitter)