Houses

[Milo]

1 hour ago, kingcarr21 said:

So the finances have been sorted so it looks like my house move is going ahead. Currently searches are ongoing. Environmental search is complete so waiting for the others.

 

Anybody on here gone through a house move during the Coronavirus? Is the length of time to actually move increased due to the virus?

 

I think the move will take longer than usual especially with the rush to beat the deadline for stamp duty. Luckily I am a first time buyer so it doesn't affect me but the owners of the house I am moving into will be affected. 

 

Scary and exciting times ahead

Well done mate - fingers crossed everything goes well for you.

 

We moved two months ago - so very much during Coronavirus!

 

The experience we had, and the message that I got from the agents is that solicitors are being even slower than usual. Ours was impossible to contact after they'd taken us on. Caused a huge amount of undue stress and additional expense.

 

If you've got your searches underway then I assume that you have your solicitor - I'd maybe try and get some assurances in place regarding communication with them. You will also have the same thing on the other end with your buyers solicitor (unless you are a FTB).

This also caused us a great amount of stress for us, as our buyers solicitor also stopped communicating with them. Even on moving day we didn't hear from them until 4pm.    

 

If your finances are in place, then the only thing that can slow the process down is your solicitors (and maybe the sellers, but you don't have any control over that) - so my advice would be to contact your solicitors every couple of days or so and check what they are doing.

 

I'm no shrinking violet, but I wish I had been waaay more aggressive when dealing with them.  

[Jon the Hat]

6 minutes ago, Milo said:

I'm no shrinking violet, but I wish I had been waaay more aggressive when dealing with them.  

I am in following up daily now - you have to keep up their list of priorities i think.  

[Sol thewall Bamba]

9 hours ago, Kopic said:

Me and my girlfriend are looking at renting at the minute, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, we have our house deposit saved up, and are waiting for the market to settle a bit before we go for a house. Secondly, neither of us have ever actually run a house before. We both have experience from university with others but that's it. We have for the past couple years lived rent free at my parents house but it is getting very tedious and we want our own space. Also we feel like we should sort of practice before we go for the real thing. Is this a good idea? We're looking at houses about 650/month atm which we can afford, the thing that is really putting us off is the massive deposit they all require. We feel like we should take a year renting just to get used to it all before we make such a huge commitment to a mortgage, but on the other hand I feel like its just pissing money up the wall considering our current living arrangements. Really not sure what to do.

Yeah go for it, if you've both been at Uni you'll be fine, set everything up on direct debits and it just ticks over with very little "management". Price of houses is only going one way, get on ASAP and start building your equity. 

[Milo]

3 minutes ago, Jon the Hat said:

I am in following up daily now - you have to keep up their list of priorities i think.  

We found out during our process that our solicitor was a freelancer - it seems that the main firm was so overwhelmed that they had outsourced a lot of their work (but continued taking on more work, naturally).

 

Ours was working from home, looking after the kids and taking on a ridiculous amount of case work. 

On completion day, she told us she had 18 completions to complete and we'd just have to wait our turn.

 

Wasn't much fun.

[David Guiza]

Respect that it's a stressful time, but is calling somebody on a daily basis who is struggling with their workload the best use of time for all involved? I'm sure they want the file off their respective desks as soon as you do. 

 

I appreciate that nobody would give two s***s about Solicitors, but I imagine they are in a difficult position at the moment with Conveyancing. Most firms are completely swamped thanks to the unprecedented increase in demand with the SDLT holiday, but the economic uncertainty looms over them as it does with everybody else. It's all well and good taking on extra bodies to ease the workload, but then what happens if/when the holiday abruptly ends, house prices drop, and the work dries up? They also have as much of a right to work from home as anybody else. Quite a few firms I know have got rid of quite a few support staff, so it's also likely that they're doing the jobs of 2/3 people. 

 

I do feel as though patience is waring thinner than ever during the pandemic, which is understandable given the circumstances, but it's worth baring in mind that everyone's in the same boat. 

This very much feels like defend the indefensible, but having worked in property law and still working in a solicitors firm I felt compelled to add my two pence worth . 

[Costock_Fox]

42 minutes ago, David Guiza said:

Respect that it's a stressful time, but is calling somebody on a daily basis who is struggling with their workload the best use of time for all involved? I'm sure they want the file off their respective desks as soon as you do. 

 

I appreciate that nobody would give two s***s about Solicitors, but I imagine they are in a difficult position at the moment with Conveyancing. Most firms are completely swamped thanks to the unprecedented increase in demand with the SDLT holiday, but the economic uncertainty looms over them as it does with everybody else. It's all well and good taking on extra bodies to ease the workload, but then what happens if/when the holiday abruptly ends, house prices drop, and the work dries up? They also have as much of a right to work from home as anybody else. Quite a few firms I know have got rid of quite a few support staff, so it's also likely that they're doing the jobs of 2/3 people. 

 

I do feel as though patience is waring thinner than ever during the pandemic, which is understandable given the circumstances, but it's worth baring in mind that everyone's in the same boat. 

This very much feels like defend the indefensible, but having worked in property law and still working in a solicitors firm I felt compelled to add my two pence worth . 

My experience with this is that if you don’t call and set reasonable expectations as to when something is going to happen it doesn’t happen.

 

I remortgaged a few months ago and if I didn’t chase them it would still be sitting on someone’s desk. 

[Kopic]

Cheers for the replies everyone, given me a lot to think about.

[kingcarr21]

2 hours ago, Milo said:

Well done mate - fingers crossed everything goes well for you.

 

We moved two months ago - so very much during Coronavirus!

 

The experience we had, and the message that I got from the agents is that solicitors are being even slower than usual. Ours was impossible to contact after they'd taken us on. Caused a huge amount of undue stress and additional expense.

 

If you've got your searches underway then I assume that you have your solicitor - I'd maybe try and get some assurances in place regarding communication with them. You will also have the same thing on the other end with your buyers solicitor (unless you are a FTB).

This also caused us a great amount of stress for us, as our buyers solicitor also stopped communicating with them. Even on moving day we didn't hear from them until 4pm.    

 

If your finances are in place, then the only thing that can slow the process down is your solicitors (and maybe the sellers, but you don't have any control over that) - so my advice would be to contact your solicitors every couple of days or so and check what they are doing.

 

I'm no shrinking violet, but I wish I had been waaay more aggressive when dealing with them.  

Thanks for sharing, so far the solicitors have been really good. Keeping me updated. The buyers solicitors seem to be even more on the ball than mine as it always seems like we are 1 step behind the buyers solicitors.

 

My solicitor has a live tracker so i can keep up to date with proceedings online. So fingers crossed it will proceed with little hiccups.

 

I am a First time buyer so it really shouldn't be a difficult transaction to do. Here's hoping

[David Guiza]

43 minutes ago, Costock_Fox said:

My experience with this is that if you don’t call and set reasonable expectations as to when something is going to happen it doesn’t happen.

 

I remortgaged a few months ago and if I didn’t chase them it would still be sitting on someone’s desk. 

There are undoubtedly some awfully slow Solicitors, so that doesn't surprise me at all, but wherever I've worked in the past remortgages can be done in a matter of a couple of week providing the offer isn't delayed etc. That just stinks of poor prioritising as the legal work involved for a remortgage is fairly minimal.

 

We all have different experiences though, I guess, and for the most part no two files/experiences are the same. 

[ajthefox]

My offer was accepted in the last week of November. I'm a FTB and the property is vacant. The mortgage is all sorted but we've still not had all of the required information from the Seller's solicitors.

 

My solicitor has been ok as it's a mate, but I'm getting frustrated as it seems like it's still a month or so off. House sharing is shite and I'm sick of it!

[Manini]

Proper first world problem but the new build we’ve bought was started at the same time as two other identical houses on our street. The house at the end of our new street has completed today and they’ve got the keys and moved in. I’ve been told that they have finished building ours but they’re estimating completion towards the middle/end of March. 
 

Just so frustrating that there’s such a big gap from one moving in to us when they were started at the same time and I think we, actually, reserved our plot first. 

[Guest Fktf]

14 hours ago, Kopic said:

Me and my girlfriend are looking at renting at the minute, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, we have our house deposit saved up, and are waiting for the market to settle a bit before we go for a house. Secondly, neither of us have ever actually run a house before. We both have experience from university with others but that's it. We have for the past couple years lived rent free at my parents house but it is getting very tedious and we want our own space. Also we feel like we should sort of practice before we go for the real thing. Is this a good idea? We're looking at houses about 650/month atm which we can afford, the thing that is really putting us off is the massive deposit they all require. We feel like we should take a year renting just to get used to it all before we make such a huge commitment to a mortgage, but on the other hand I feel like its just pissing money up the wall considering our current living arrangements. Really not sure what to do.

I remember thinking like this when I was younger - and in the end decided to buy my own place. You don't really need any practice at 'running a house' - what you did at Uni is about all there is to it. You budget to be able to pay the bills come in, and then you pay them.

 

I guess one concern might be, what if something goes wrong (e.g. leaks) - which wouldn't be your responsibility if you were renting. If you stick it out at your parents for a bit longer, and each month put aside the sort of money you're thinking about spending on rent, then by the time you've got your own place you'll have built up a nice sum of money to cover the small things that might go wrong. You can get a survey done on the house to pick up anything major/more costly before you buy.

 

You're looking at 7.5k to rent for a year, which will only end up paying someone else's mortgage. Far better to spend (or save) that sort of money on yourself. 

 

[Christoph]

1 hour ago, Fktf said:

I remember thinking like this when I was younger - and in the end decided to buy my own place. You don't really need any practice at 'running a house' - what you did at Uni is about all there is to it. You budget to be able to pay the bills come in, and then you pay them.

 

I guess one concern might be, what if something goes wrong (e.g. leaks) - which wouldn't be your responsibility if you were renting. If you stick it out at your parents for a bit longer, and each month put aside the sort of money you're thinking about spending on rent, then by the time you've got your own place you'll have built up a nice sum of money to cover the small things that might go wrong. You can get a survey done on the house to pick up anything major/more costly before you buy.

 

You're looking at 7.5k to rent for a year, which will only end up paying someone else's mortgage. Far better to spend (or save) that sort of money on yourself. 

 

 

To be fair though it is a risk if you move in with your mrs who you haven't lived with alone yet. All of a sudden you move in and you realise things aren't working out....you like to do this and she likes to do that etc. Bit harder to sort out afterwards!

 

Saying that though me and my mrs never lived together. I lived with my parents and she with hers and we both got a mortgage and moved in together despite not renting (however we were together for about 10 years)! Bit of a strain at the beginning but nothing mental but i'm sure it could be for other couples. 

 

Spending a few grand renting to know for certain isnt the worse idea especially if you haven't been together that long. I'd have been with my mrs for ten years before we got the mortgage so there was less risk. But getting a mortgage with someone you have been with for only a couple of years and you might end up realising you cant live with that person. 

 

Tough decision though as you are right...its a lot of money that can be saved towards your house. 

[FoyleFox]

We put an offer in on a house yesterday and it was accepted today. We've also found out that our buyers are cash buyers, the people we're buying from are cash buyers and the house they are looking at is vacant possession.

 

And as we were informed by our lender this week that they are unwilling to port our current mortgage, despite the fact we only remortgaged to them in July, we'll be cash buyers. We'd saved money to do work on the house but will have to use it to buy it instead. Fortunately, the house we're going for was right at the bottom of our budget and we've negotiated them down £20k as it requires gutting. A complete refurb was our preferred purchase type too. 

 

Hopefully,  a straight forward chain. The agent said this morning that the elements causing delays are Mortgage valuations and Solicitors, the searches are being returned much quicker now. 

 

If all goes well we could be back in Leicestershire for the summer 😀

 

And, after 14 long months apart, I've actually been able to see my parents. Rather cold standing on the drive waving but so pleased to be able to do that. Did feel a bit ridiculous that we'd been able to spend an hour inside, viewing other people's houses with them showing us around but had to stand outside my parents house!

Edited 12 February 2021 by FoyleFox

[Wolfox]

21 hours ago, newfox1 said:

Evening all, thoughts housing market looking at the moment here?

 

Think things a getting back to normal to more realistic prices now the mania is reducing? Seems houses taking bit longer to shift, yet some getting snapped up in a week looking at Zoopla and a few others.

 

 

 

 

I suspect asking prices will remain similar, but, what people will be willing to expect will become more realistic…. 

[Wolfox]

10 hours ago, kingcarr21 said:

So the finances have been sorted so it looks like my house move is going ahead. Currently searches are ongoing. Environmental search is complete so waiting for the others.

 

Anybody on here gone through a house move during the Coronavirus? Is the length of time to actually move increased due to the virus?

 

I think the move will take longer than usual especially with the rush to beat the deadline for stamp duty. Luckily I am a first time buyer so it doesn't affect me but the owners of the house I am moving into will be affected. 

 

Scary and exciting times ahead

Yes…. Just be patient…. I don’t know if you’re impacted by stamp duty (then you’d want to apply the pressure!). If not be patient as searches are completely backed up

 

As for solicitors…. There workload is mental…. Everyone in the chain I was recently part of had issues in that regard…

 

You’ll get there in the end as everyone knows what the current situation is…

[Wolfox]

8 hours ago, Jon the Hat said:

I am in following up daily now - you have to keep up their list of priorities i think.  

I’m a laid back guy, but, my solicitors (who were in the main quite good) had a couple of shots across the bows…. Ensure you’re front of mind when it comes to the sticky end of the process…. Be persistent 

[Wolfox]

8 hours ago, David Guiza said:

Respect that it's a stressful time, but is calling somebody on a daily basis who is struggling with their workload the best use of time for all involved? I'm sure they want the file off their respective desks as soon as you do. 

 

I appreciate that nobody would give two s***s about Solicitors, but I imagine they are in a difficult position at the moment with Conveyancing. Most firms are completely swamped thanks to the unprecedented increase in demand with the SDLT holiday, but the economic uncertainty looms over them as it does with everybody else. It's all well and good taking on extra bodies to ease the workload, but then what happens if/when the holiday abruptly ends, house prices drop, and the work dries up? They also have as much of a right to work from home as anybody else. Quite a few firms I know have got rid of quite a few support staff, so it's also likely that they're doing the jobs of 2/3 people. 

 

I do feel as though patience is waring thinner than ever during the pandemic, which is understandable given the circumstances, but it's worth baring in mind that everyone's in the same boat. 

This very much feels like defend the indefensible, but having worked in property law and still working in a solicitors firm I felt compelled to add my two pence worth . 

I agree completely with everything you’ve put…

 

I am going to drop a ‘however’ though

 

As simple missed communications were causing stress to an elderly couple at the top of the chain and basic stuff was slipping…

 

If everything is progressing slowly fine, but, when it’s up at the final stage, i found that I needed to push…. It’s unfortunate truth that it got things done…

 

just don’t be knob!

[Leicester_Loyal]

1 hour ago, Wolfox said:

I suspect asking prices will remain similar, but, what people will be willing to expect will become more realistic…. 

Yep, can't see prices dropping, they'll probably stay at this level for a few months before starting to creep up again.

[Unabomber]

11 minutes ago, Leicester_Loyal said:

Yep, can't see prices dropping, they'll probably stay at this level for a few months before starting to creep up again.

They will definitely drop 

[Leicester_Loyal]

6 minutes ago, Unabomber said:

They will definitely drop 

Fingers crossed! Can't see anything major though.

[Unabomber]

12 minutes ago, Leicester_Loyal said:

Fingers crossed! Can't see anything major though.

I bloody hope they do anyway. Had mine valued the other day and it has gone up 33% since 2016. Absolutely mental and I think the prices will drop soon once the stamp duty break ends. I think people have been paying over the odds as they think they are saving on the tax whereas in reality they over payment on the property price counteracts the tax break. 

[Leicester_Loyal]

20 minutes ago, Unabomber said:

I bloody hope they do anyway. Had mine valued the other day and it has gone up 33% since 2016. Absolutely mental and I think the prices will drop soon once the stamp duty break ends. I think people have been paying over the odds as they think they are saving on the tax whereas in reality they over payment on the property price counteracts the tax break. 

Some decent profit in that!

 

I was booked in to see a mortgage advisor in April 2020, that got cancelled because of COVID, but started looking at houses properly in May, not long before the stamp duty cut was announced, prices went up by about 5% overnight. In the areas I'm looking they've gone up about 8-10% in the past 12 months, ridiculous really! As long as they don't go up by another 5% or more in the next 10 months then I should be ok, as I've put almost every penny I've got into my deposit.

[Unabomber]

33 minutes ago, Leicester_Loyal said:

Some decent profit in that!

 

I was booked in to see a mortgage advisor in April 2020, that got cancelled because of COVID, but started looking at houses properly in May, not long before the stamp duty cut was announced, prices went up by about 5% overnight. In the areas I'm looking they've gone up about 8-10% in the past 12 months, ridiculous really! As long as they don't go up by another 5% or more in the next 10 months then I should be ok, as I've put almost every penny I've got into my deposit.

Yeah on paper looks good but nothing changes as the homes I am looking at have gone up by at least that % or more. Interesting to see how it goes though over the next few months.

[kingcarr21]

On 12/02/2021 at 19:01, Wolfox said:

Yes…. Just be patient…. I don’t know if you’re impacted by stamp duty (then you’d want to apply the pressure!). If not be patient as searches are completely backed up

 

As for solicitors…. There workload is mental…. Everyone in the chain I was recently part of had issues in that regard…

 

You’ll get there in the end as everyone knows what the current situation is…

Yea we are first time buyers so the stamp duty isn't something to worry about. So we will just go with the flow. The owners of the house we are moving into are moving into an empty house (owner passed away). So hopefully it should be an easy transaction. I dont mind anyway, the longer it takes the more time i have where i can put some money aside to give me a cushion to start off with.