First time buyers, can we have a handhold please?

[Spencer0220]

FTB here. Not quite sure what we're doing and don't have anyone to ask.

Would anyone like to come along on our journey please?

Our landlord let us know a couple of weeks ago that he wouldn't be looking to renew the tenancy in December.

By then we will have been here 4 years.

We're both significantly disabled and finding an accessible rental round here isn't possible. Council won't let us join the list as our income is WAY above their threshold.

So, we're looking to buy from our landlord. Unexpected, but we luckily have enough savings to do this now, instead of moving in a few years as we initially planned.

Our accepted offer was £360k. We had it valued by mortgage person today and as I suspected, it's going to be valued significantly below that.

I'm scared. We both want this to be our forever home because it has everything we need. Given our different needs, that's a tall order. We never planned to buy forever first, but it's been put in front of us and we'd be mad not to try.

What happens now? Our mortgage person said we should negotiate a better deal. But how? Landlord very unlikely to agree.

Also decided not to instruct solicitor mortgage person put us in touch with. Her quote was STAGGERINGLY over others. And I got 🚩 about the way she works.

Thank you if you stop by. 🩷

Hi @Spencer0220 .

Please speak to your mortgage advisor & get them to explain to you what the down value actually means.

Earlier you said that you were going to borrow £290k on a purchase price of £360k, which a Loan-to-Value (LTV) of around 80%.

With the property being downvalued the lender would be basing their calculations on £320k and not £360. So borrowing £290k now means a LTV of around 90%. In fact slightly over & will push you into the 95% bracket.

All lenders set their interest rates into LTV brackets, with 95% being the maximum. In fact, some lenders might only lend up to 90%.

As I say, please speak to your mortgage adviser & tell them that you are still buying for £360k & need to borrow £290k and see what they say.

Already done that @Biggaybear. It's only going to affect us by £50 pcm for minimum repayments. The broker ran the figures based on a 90% LTV because we can increase our deposit to £72k, which is our absolute maximum.

The £50 is irrelevant to us as realistically we're overpaying by circa £800 pcm going forward. That's what we've budgeted for on our monthly budget.

Our aim is repayment in 20 years, even though the term is 32.

MIL needed a hoist around her house and her 4 bed detached was only just big enough. It’s really rubbish that loads of houses in the UK aren’t set up for accessibility. There are so many ‘hidden extra costs’ with physical disabilities (like paying more for an Uber because you have a wheelchair) that lots of people aren’t aware of.

if you’ve been there four years you probably know all the in’s and out’s of the flat. When we bought our house we were too emotional about it and found loads of (costly) defects after we moved in. Are you planning on getting a survey?

have you run the numbers for worst case scenarios? Eg if one of you loses a job?

Ah well with the added information it is obvious that this house is the perfect one for you @Spencer0220

I still think the LL is very lucky you aren’t renegotiating on price but I totally understand your reasons. However if he originally accepted 340k and his business partner was the one calling for 360k, it really wouldn’t hurt to try offering 350k. I imagine they would be pretty happy with that considering the flats are currently listed at 360k & realistically they are very unlikely to get full asking price from anyone else.

I would try offering it via the EA. If the answer No comes back you can at least feel like you tried & that 10k would be useful & it’s the normal way of buying a property to haggle a bit. It won’t mean they decide to sell the property to someone else! It’s perfect for you but probably not perfect for the average buyer.

Anyway, whatever you decide to do I wish you luck and keep asking questions 😀

I don't work because of disability.

My husband has enough adjustment to work with his disability and his employer is in the education sector, so he has a very stable income. I have honestly never met such a supportive employer. It also helps that the actual people really appreciate him.

His skills are such that he could easily transfer them.

Should he become unwell, he gets paid for a year before SSP kicks in, which would more than cover his likely disability related issues.

His pension arrangements also such that should he die, I can likely remain here.

Should I lose benefits or die, he'll just continue to pay the mortgage as normal.

I hope I don't come across as cold. We've had to plan for many years how I will cope if we lose his income.

No you don’t come across as cold at all @Spencer0220 just good at planning

Now that we have a mortgage offer, what do we need the mortgage broker for?

I wonder if we can directly deal with the bank?

On his advice, we told the EA to only contact him not us. He intends to manage this process for us.

I've noticed a number of errors in his communications, that had I not read the documents myself, would have been potentially very costly. Including searching for a mortgage initially of less than half of the value we would have needed. Because apparently I told him the house was priced at £180k.

I'm used to overseeing everything myself. It's feeling almost uncomfortably wrong that I'm not.

He also kept insisting the house was valued at £330 and I had to literally talk over him until he stopped talking, because he wouldn't accept that the document said £320.

In fact, I had to direct him to read the page with me on the phone waiting, before he apologised and accepted that he had misread the numbers and was therefore running the wrong figures through his calculations.

I know I probably come across as rude, telling a man double my age to go and read something, but I want to get this right.

My husband says it's because I trained in law. I'm used to reading everything myself and not accepting anything without evidence.

>I wonder if we can directly deal with the bank?

As you know, I have not bought a house three times

Time 1 - broker - offer within 2 days
Time 2 - broker - offer within 2 days
Time 3 - bank - First Direct - still pissing around going through all the hoops they were forcing me through after 4 weeks to “choose the type of mortgage that’s best for you” even though I know exactly what I want and told them so, and was borrowing approx 1/2 we are able to. Added to that they did a hard credit check and underwrote the mortgage when I specifically said “we’re not ready to apply yet, this is a soft credit check, right?” and then they lied to me about why they had done a hard check when I pulled them up on it.

“You can talk to a mortgage advisor in 10 days.” Are you kidding me?

”We just need to talk you through your options, it will take 5 minutes.”
Woman calls me “so this will take about 45 minutes.” She then told me I was a deeply well informed FTB who was making her life very easy and still kept me on the phone for a sodding HOUR. I was not impressed with her suggesting we extend the mortgage past the OH’s retirement age (we could afford to pay it off in 12 years ffs, she’s now suggesting more than 27 years), or “if you go on a tracker you can fix when rates go down.”
Yeah, I have modelled that. You will get a ton more money and the base rate would have to drop 2% for the best part of 2 years to make that worth my while.

Additionally, it’s a broker’s job to automatically get you a lower rate if the lender changes the mortgage rate on the mortgage you have been offered between your agreement and the money being issued, whereas with a bank, they will do the same, but you have to track their rates, call them and ask them. That could add weeks. A broker will have it done and dusted inside 4 hours. I saw someone on here a few days ago say their broker got them 4 price drops between offer and issue (which will have been a max time of 6, 7
months at a push).

I don’t particularly rate any brokers we have dealt with - probably 7 in total - but I bloody hate having my time wasted even more.

I'll stick with the broker then. Although he didn't explain the price drop thing nearly as succinctly as you did.

Once we have a mortgage and the flat, can all communication only come to us?

I absolutely don't want to deal with him in 5 years time.

You won’t be dealing with him much longer. Once you agree a mortgage deal with a Lender you will be dealing with the Lender directly not a broker.

Mortgage offered.

Broker has diarised a call in 5 years despite me trying to talk him out of it and saying that we'd be in contact.

Ok so once you are sure you don’t need the broker anymore for buying this property you block their number on your phone and ignore any emails they may send in 5 years time.

Unfortunately it's a "regulatory" thing. Or should I say, Advisory firms are running scared of the regulators and are all putting in place systems that document when they should be seeing the clients next.

Also it does make sense from their side as they can then get ahead of the game 4-6 months before your fixed rate is due to finish. Leave it too late & you might go elsewhere or simply take a new rate from your current lender. No problem with that but your broker can do that for you & get paid a fee (usually half of what they would get by remortgaging you with a different/ new lender).

How is that regulatory? I'm confused, sorry!

He's expected to have retired by then, and he will appoint a firm to take over.

But I want to reach out if necessary. Not the other way around.

I read through everything myself too. I also double checked I couldn’t get a better offer for the mortgage elsewhere. We used the broker because we were a bit busy to do the work and she was recommended by a friend. With hindsight we probably didn’t need one. She didn’t do much once getting the offer. We had another call to change the buying price after renegotiating after the survey.

the estate agent was mostly hassling the buyer/ seller to hurry things along or arranging appointments (second viewings or surveyors etc). sometimes they’d call the solicitors too but the solicitor didn’t call them with anything.

Most of the communication happened with the solicitors. So the solicitors liaised with the seller’s solicitor and the lender (but not the broker).

Oh gosh I just ticked the wrong box on a form and I can't undo it

What do I do????

I've sent solicitor urgent text

Solicitor so helpful all fixed

Update: draft contract already with the solicitors.

This is FAST.

Also, are we supposed to be getting a survey? Nobody has mentioned anything to us.

You get a survey if you want to get a survey. The Lender has done their own “valuation survey” which is very basic but if you want a level 2 or level 3 survey it’s up to you to organise one with a surveyor.

Most people do get a survey to find out potential problems in a property and some people use those issues revealed to try to negotiate money off the agreed purchase price. It doesn’t sound like you will be trying to get a reduction on the price. But you may still want to know if there are problems such as a roof that will need replacing in the next few years, for example. Or you could choose not to get a survey at all - up to you.

I'm sorry @Spencer0220. I hadn't realised that your disabilities were so severe as had the impression that you were both able to work. I can see why you are so anxious given what you have written. I hope it works out for you and goes smoothly.

I would only get a survey if there's things you have noticed while living there that you may think may lead to negotiating money off. i.e damp, cracks etc.

I've read through your posts and I overall just feel very happy for you that there's a solution that allows you to stay in your home. I hope it's a smooth process for you.

Thank you all. I'm going to double check with the solicitor on Tuesday, just in case.

I'm leaning toward not getting a survey because, having lived here, we see it every day. People don't randomly get surveys in the middle of the time they live there.

In the 4 years nothing major has happened except a pigeon issue that got sorted very quickly and a gas leak that was sorted very fast.

I can tell you now that your solicitor will advise you to get a survey because they are risk averse and it's not their money being spent.

But considering you have lived there for 4 years already and considering you won't negotiate on the price whatever the survey shows, you may as well save your money (in my opinion).