Owning your own home

@tommmmmmm

The forum solicitor for house moves is Martin Browne at Gisby Harrison: http://www.gisbyharrison.co.uk/martin-browne.php

He's helped me and probably another 5 or 6 forumers.

Does he know he's LFGSS's resident solicitor? I'm guessing this is a stage I should have considered before putting an offer in, can he work at relatively short notice like this?

Does he know he's LFGSS's resident solicitor? I'm guessing this is a stage I should have considered before putting an offer in, can he work at relatively short notice like this?

I'm not sure if he know's he's preferred by a cycling forum...

I first contacted him after we'd put an offer in. He's very efficient.

I told him I got his details from a bike forum :) (although I didn't go with him in the end as he was on holiday for a couple of crucial weeks, I know others on this thread have recommended him)

I went with this woman http://hugginslaw.co.uk/about-us-ann-hines Was decent, kicked arse where necessary.

Thanks guys.

I think this one is going tits up as well, the estate agents have a financial adviser who has to 'qualify' an offer before it can properly go through - although our offers have already been passed on to the vendor so I'm not sure why this is necessary. This adviser does nothing but times or combined salaries by 4.5, thus coming up with a smaller figure than our mortgage adviser did, meaning our offer does not qualify.

Mortgage adviser is on holiday today and can't do a decision in principle outlining our finances till Monday so our offer is going to stay 'subject to qualification' which doesn't really reflect well on us.

That sounds stupid, is it standard practice these days?

Doesn't seem to be, she didn't even seem to be trying to sell us her services as an adviser either. Our mortgage adviser couldn't understand it either.

3 bed in east london or an 8 bad chateau in south of france
http://france.businessesforsale.com/french/Ideal-Chateau-Wedding-Conference-And-Events-Venue-For-Sale.aspx

The commute from France each day might be a little expensive.

main reception room can seat 100

foreveralone.jpeg

sorry if I'm being dim (and have missed the point) but you are going to borrow more than 4.5 times your household income?

Yes (by a modest amount), but with the caveat that our current jobs both offer relatively steep salary increases, and that even borrowing that much the repayments would be cheaper than the rent we are currently paying.

So I suppose I would say this year, yes, next year, no.

I'll take the south of France option, lock in B thanks Eddie.

I thought x5 was the max you could go to ..just make sure you go in with your eyes open - thats a chunky mortgage to have (I guess you can rely on the pay increases as long as you are sure you'll get them)

I think the only reason we would be able to borrow more than 4.5 times is because of the nature of the jobs we do.

I'm still not sure what I'll be getting paid next year, as I'm entering a new pay scale, but I've been calculating it with the minimum amount and it could be more.

even 40+ years ago when mortgage lending was more conservative you could do this - my dad got a mortgage that looked ridiculous against his income at the time, but like you he was on a steeply increasing wage for the next few years. I think lenders see teachers and tenured academics as relatively 'safe' in that way (maybe less safe than 40 years ago though...).

Apparently I only needed £800 more p/a on my salary to get 25k more than I've been offered.
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Owning your own home comes with delightful joys every so often. Roof leaks, blocked drains, moth infestations, etc but the latest one was technological.

I'll be working from home two days a week from now and I have to do a couple of hours of conference calls each day (heh, beats actual work) and so I nipped out and bought a cheap corded telephone that has a speakerphone.

Plugged it into the telephone socket in the spare room (which is doubling as my home office), no dial tone.

Plugged 'phone into sockets elsewhere in the flat, dial tone.

Traced the spare room wiring back along the wall and then outside, it's a separate sodding 'phone line (that's currently not in service). I guess some previous owners (who shared the flat) had a second line installed. Le sigh. 10m extension cable will have to do for now.

Annoyingly this is also where I was going to have the BT Infinity stuff installed should Openreach ever get around to upgrading my local cabinet (the "It should be ready in the next 3 months" has been rolling on for almost 3 years now.)

How did they make that up?

Just spent £3.5k in a week on a new boiler and roof repairs.

Owning a house is fucking expensive. Thank god prices have gone up.

Not sure Brucy. I guess there's some bullshit thresholds at work.
They did, however, advise me to start looking at the price I was planning on anyway. So all avenues can't have been covered yet.

blockquote> Apparently I only needed £800 more p/a on my salary to get 25k more than I've been offered.
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time to ask for a cheeky payrise

Is this true post Mortgage Market Review? I thought the FCA was / is getting pretty strict about lending on future prospects rather than current situation.

I think some lenders will lend joint applicants more than 4x salary anyway, even the woman who was 'qualifying our offer' said that, but said that without proof that we had at least an AIP with a lender who did our offer wouldn't count.

In the end that didn't matter as our offer wasn't accepted anyway, so I think the Catford dream is over.