First Time Buyer Advice

Has your offer been verbally accepted then?

Yup provided everything is sorted in our meeting on Saturday. We've been up front and let them know everything so at least there's that.

Plus our meeting is two doors away from the estate agent so we can take everything round straight after (and drop the vendor a message as he gave us his number when we were viewing the property). Then it's just a case of arranging for us to go round again to take measurements for windows so we can order curtains or blinds.

Meeting the mortgage broker?

Don't order anything until the survey is complete and the contracts are exchanged.

Yup, I think they will be really useful and having seen the nightmare one of my colleagues is having chasing everyone I do think it will be smoother.

We won't, but it's good to have the measurements ready so as soon as that's all done we can.

Good luck.

Thank you

It sounds corny but in the house I felt really at peace, happy and could see me and my partner living there with our cat. And also being there as our lives change in the next few years.

I'm not one to normally have a response like that and haven't at other places we've seen so when I heard people explaining you just have a feeling I never understood what they meant before.

Every time being twice. It's not like I take out a new mortgage on a regular basis.

 

I'm sure you offer the best service you can. I don't really believe that brokers have access to deals that banks don't advertise on websites and through their own in branch staff though, it's certainly not the case at HSBC (where I'm currently working).

 

---------- Post added 21-06-2017 at 22:22 ----------

 

Are houses selling at asking + lots and are houses selling rapidly?

I understood that the market was still quite slow and that the days of multiple above asking price bids were long over.

We definitely do Cyclone but no, not with HSBC, we have only just convinced HSBC to use brokers they were always direct only until about a year ago.

Some lenders that do offer broker exclusives:

Halifax

Virgin Money

Tesco Bank.

They're are more especially the smaller building societies that have the money to lend but don't have enough advisors or branches to cope.

Properties are sometimes going for above asking price but it depends on the area and demand in that area. It's caused by low housing stock, estate agents are desperate for houses to sell.

Have you got any updates on your offer op? How did it go?

I've used London and Country as my broker for the last 2 mortgages, first to buy the house and then a remortgage as the fixed deal came to an end. They were great, sorted out loads of the paperwork for me and chased things as well. They did loads of calculations based on different deal lengths and costs if interest rates went up so we could see if the benefit of £20 a month saving on a 2 year deal was worth the risk of hitting higher interest rates once it ended versus getting more security of a 5 year deal. They don't charge fees either(fees are recouped from the mortgage company and they are fully upfront about that) and I was very impressed. They showed all the fees they get from each company so I could see they weren't trying to get me to go a mortgage that gave them a higher fee. They didn't get me an exclusive broker only deal as they couldn't find a better offer that fitted my circumstances than a standard deal but it confirmed it was the best deal on the market at the time and as I didn't pay anything I didn't lose out at all.

We are using a broker based at an estate agents, as a first time buyer i'd recommend using a broker rather than trying to find your own mortgage unless you have a good budget to work with. If the house goes through alright though i'd probably go with an independant broker for the re mortgage as they apparantly can look at the whole market where as if they are an estate agent based broker they are abit more limited, not sure how true that is though,

We are using a broker based at an estate agents, as a first time buyer i'd recommend using a broker rather than trying to find your own mortgage unless you have a good budget to work with. If the house goes through alright though i'd probably go with an independant broker for the re mortgage as they apparantly can look at the whole market where as if they are an estate agent based broker they are abit more limited, not sure how true that is though,

It's pretty much spot on Nervy, most (not all) estate agents use between 15 & 20 lenders were as a normal broker will have access to almost 100.

Plus one can reasonably expect a better result from an "all of market" broker who is disinterestedly advising.