Step by step guide to buying a home
- Decide you want to take the leap from renting to owning
- Visit a Financial Advisor to find out what you can borrow and understand the mortgages available. They should be able to pre approve you before you even start looking. Try this home loan calculator to give you an idea of what you can afford.
- Register with estate agents in the area where you want to buy. Be wary of taking out a sole mandate. Make sure you understand all the implications of this mandate.
- Visit as many houses as possible - Ask a lot of questions when you look at the homes. This should give you a feel if the agent is being on level with you. Take a list of questions with you.
- Once you have found a house you want to buy you need to make an offer.
- Offer is accepted
- Go back to your financial advisor, file home loan application and wait for this to be accepted.
- At the same time find and instruct a solicitor. This also indicates how serious you are in the purchase.
- Once your home loan has been instructed, they will send some one to survey the house to check it is worth what you are paying. You should also get a private survey to ensure that the house is structurally sound.
- The house you are buying will require an electrical certificate, before the transfer will go through. The cost of any repairs on the electrics will be for the sellers account.
- Your solicitor will carry out searches and various other legal bits and pieces and check that everything is in order, If your are a first time buyer the process should be smoother than if you are in a long chain
- Once the legal work is in place , it is time to exchange housing contracts, this means that the purchase is now legally binding and that you can't back out! You also pay your deposit over to your solicitor at this point.
- Now you need to set a completion date
- This is a good time to arrange all of your life assurance and insurances so that they are ready to start on completion date
- Arrange removal van or rope in your friends to help you move all of your stuff
- On the date of completion , your solicitor will arrange for the transfer of money from your mortgage company to the vendor's solicitor. On this day you will also pay the stamp duty and will a receive a large solicitors bill for all of the legal fees
- Get your keys
- Now you are a home owner you should also consider writing a will -After all you now have a rather large asset!
