Owning your own home

I'm pleased I'm not the only person that refers to it as Sunny Sidcup

Got the list of outstanding queries from my solicitor and shared them with the vendor. They didn't have a clue so I have told them to go to their solicitor and pull their finger out.

One of them was an insurance certificate with no address on it. FFS

I've just made an offer on a house.

Currently shitting myself now.

where abouts ???

Prestwich.

Trying to buy the house we're currently renting.

Well that all worked out very strangely haha! Was the landlord going to screw you over or did everything just fall into place?

well we'll see.

They're still cunts for fucking us over but thats the agencies fault not the owner.

Mortgage company got in touch after more than a week to ask for one document I'd forgotten to send earlier and to query 2 transactions on my bank statement. One was a transfer of £10 between two of my accounts and the other was clearly described as being to the solicitors doing our conveyancing. Seems pretty random

@rhowe

how many months/years bank statements did you have to provide the mortgage company? I've been notoriously bad with money in the past and I'm a bit worried about that.

Mine was three months worth statements & payslips but it's substantially more if you do contract work (as one of my friends found out recently).

ahh that's not so bad then.

cheers.

anyone know anything about landord / tenant shit?
for the past year i had a friend living at my old flat but when i moved out i went to fully managed by a local estate agent. They found a tenant got him moved in and send me the money on the 1st of every month - that is until this month when the tenant decided not to pay because he's lost his job. Apparently he's managed to get benefits now and will be paying the rent tomorrow, but where do i stand? the agent tells me i can't evict him until he's not paid for 8 weeks. i don't have landlords insurance yet but starting to thing i really should have got some! anyone dealt with this before? i can't imagine it being easy to make a claim for this kind of thing

any advice ?

I don't know anything about it but I'd say Landlords Insurance would be a very good idea.

They have access to your banking records via your credit report. This goes back 6 years, and show your month end balances and overdraft limits.

I can't wait for them to see that then.

#stressed

How the fuck have I got an excellent credit rating then? Does excellent mean for years spent bouncing off the bottom of a big student overdraft?

Luckily I've sorted it out lately. Nationwide so far have been very fussy about documents, because I'm on a fixed term contract they've needed to see proof of salary (it has just gone up and will be backdated but doesn't show on my paycheck yet), the original signed contract, a letter from my employer to confirm I will be getting a new contract...sounds like they're looking for reasons not to lend to me, but hopefully they're going to come through.

We had the survey done today, so more reason to cross my fingers.

Mansion tax anybody?

@rhowe

how many months/years bank statements did you have to provide the mortgage company? I've been notoriously bad with money in the past and I'm a bit worried about that.

1 month, although their requirements were really bizarre.

They wanted a full month's statement and my most recent payslip. I took that to mean my last monthly statement, which ran 28th to 28th or so and my last payslip which was paid in on the 30th after the end of my last bank statement.

So, sent those and they said they needed to see my pay going in on the statement. I said that would mean waiting 3 weeks for my next statement, so they said can't you just run one off online banking and email it to them? That sounded comically forgable, but I did it anyway from the 1st to the 30th. Then they came back and said "but it's online so why did you only do that month? Please do it from the start of last month to today".

What a rigmarole.

Same bullshit with Mrs rhowe's statements.

Basically I could've just run a PDF off each of our online banking interfaces, emailed it over and that'd have been the end of it. To use 'official' paper statements, I had to get the accountant at work to certify a copy, scan that in and email it. Much crazy, many delay.

Also I claimed additional income in the form of a discretionary annual bonus at work, which has always been paid at around the same level. They haven't (yet) asked to see evidence of that, but who knows what random crazy request they'll come up with next.
My impressions so far are that it's all really lax and full of arbitrary requirements which make no sense.

Our solicitor was more of a pain in the arse about our funds than the Halifax were.

In latest news, got a letter today say our file has been passed to a different person at our solicitors. No reason why. This after earlier today I'd sent off a fairly shirty email saying I expected more updates by close of business today. Will be making a pissed off phone call first thing tomorrow.

Recommended tradesmen: joiner or some such?
I've got some cupboards that need shelving putting in, one that needs a floor sorting.

Could do with someone investigating the central heating as well maybe.

Boom, mortgage offer received, and the valuation survey was fine. Now it's time for solicitors to solicit, hopefully all there is to do now is wait for them to fanny around.

Good luck with this. My word of advise from solicitors is be on their case from the start. Initially make sure you ask them to tell you every scrap of info they need from you and once they have that, hound them and the estate agents for updates.

Our purchase is dragging on purely because of lease queries going back and forward between solicitors. I have had to speak to the vendor and estate agent to get things moving because our solicitor only seems to send a letter to the other solicitor and wait for a reply.

Thanks for the advice. I'm hoping that Martin Browne is the forum-recommended solicitor for a reason and that he's relatively efficient. He has had a load of information and documentation off us a couple of weeks ago so I'm hoping the wheels are already in motion.

Good stuff. We went with the one our IFA pointed us towards who by his confession, had been recommended to him and he had not used them before. Thankfully I have only given them £300 so far.

Always go with first hand recommendations, which you have done. Anyone else reading this and about to go through it, take note.

Also, don't be worried about telling them what completion date you want and make them work towards that.