Читать книгу Money: A User’s Guide - Laura Whateley - Страница 39

You spot a house you like advertised with an estate agent. You work out whether you can afford it and stamp duty based on whether you can get a mortgage. You can at this stage get a ‘mortgage in principle’, which is a non-binding agreement stating how much, based on your income, outgoings and credit score, a bank will lend you. If all looks good, you put in an offer for the property, which is hopefully accepted by the seller. You then appoint a property lawyer to start what is called the conveyancing process. You find the mortgage you want – it doesn’t have to be with the same bank that gave you a mortgage in principle – and apply for it for real.

Once the sellers have accepted your offer there is still no guarantee that they will definitely sell to you, just a ‘gentleman’s agreement’. There is a chance that you could get gazumped. That’s where another seller swoops in with a higher offer, and a greedy seller dumps you for the new bidders. Gazundering is where you, the buyer, lower your offer just before exchange of contracts. There is nothing other than your conscience, and the risk of pissing off the seller, who may pull out, to stop you doing this, but all the same, better not to – bad karma.

Cross your fingers you do not get gazumped, and insist that the person you are buying from takes down the online or estate-agent advert for their home (the estate agent probably will not do this unless you force them to). In Scotland an offer being accepted is legally binding, sometimes subject to a mortgage being approved, so you are unlikely to be gazumped, or pull out once you have put your offer in.

Your bank will carry out affordability and credit-score checks and then, with a mortgage-valuation survey, on the property you want to buy. This survey is not the same as a building survey, which checks whether the house is in good condition. You need to set this up yourself.

Meanwhile your solicitor will be carrying out checks too, on things like whether your property is on a floodplain. You have to pay for these. Press your solicitor for these to be completed quickly.

When you have received your mortgage offer and your solicitor is ready you can exchange contracts, a process carried out between your own and the seller’s solicitor. At this stage you normally need to pay 10 per cent – sometimes, if you negotiate, 5 per cent – of the price of the property you are buying to your solicitor, who passes it on to the seller’s solicitor. Make sure you have this money ready to be transferred out of your bank account; some banks will require a few days’ notice.

Be super-careful about the accuracy of your solicitor’s bank details. There is a common fraud where solicitors’ email accounts are hacked by a fraudster who sends out an email to a buyer stating that the solicitor’s bank details have changed, or adding in false sort codes and account numbers. If in any doubt, call your solicitor to check again where you send the money. Once you’ve clicked send it’s gone, and you cannot get it back if you send it to the wrong place. I’ve seen this happen several times, and it is heartbreaking.

You also need, at this stage, to arrange buildings insurance, legally required as part of receiving a mortgage.

You agree a day of completion, on which you arrange to send over the rest of your home deposit, plus any fees owed to your solicitor, as well as stamp duty. Your solicitor will receive cash from your mortgage company and arrange to send this to the seller’s solicitor on completion day, at which point you receive the keys for your new home. Woohoo!