Owning your own home

I'm about to jump in at the deep end and instruct a solicitor to make an offer for me, so if anyone has a recommendation of one that covers Scotland (Edinburgh in particular) then I'd be glad to hear it.

They'd have to dig more than that to find out...

Is a substantial chunk of your deposit from over 5 years ago? If not that is a bit harsh.

Depends on what you mean by substantial. I can see what they're getting at, they need to confirm where the money came from for AML reasons but they should also understand that people regularly transfer savings between savings products and bonds in order to take advantage of the best deals.

Those of you who've used DIY-kitchens.com, how did you plan your layout? No one seriously uses the graph paper PDF do they?

I was wondering just this the other day.

The trouble is that no-one is really sure what they have to do so they err on the side of the caution and end up going way over the top.

I used illustrator, but I'm an OCD designer ;)

Could anyone recommend a leasehold extension solicitor?

I've got to extend my leasehold, its on 80 years.. The freeholder company are insisting I use their own surveyor to find out how much the lease extension fee should be, he's quoted £850! Does this sound usual practice and reasonable? The free holders are a large property company and have form, so quite worried already that they're going to quote a ridiculous figure I won't be able to pay. If anyone's gone through this already, any advice or things to look out for would be really appreciated.

So after 9 months of waiting and frustration, I got the key to my flat yesterday. The seller had been a pain throughout, so I didn't expect any less when he left......

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That sucks. Ruins what should be a momentous occasion!
I'd say that's breach of contract and you could charge the vendor for the cost of removal and cleaning. Speak to your solicitor

some agents want to see before putting an offer forward for you...

Estate agents are legally bound to put forward any offer made to the vendor within 24 hours. The mortgage in principle is just a phone call to a broker like @hugo7 described. It doesn't take long and doesn't really mean anything because the bank can always change their mind but it will give ou a good idea of what's affordable.

I think I've found a good solicitor/ agent. It would be good to hear what people have paid and / or been quoted for conveyancing fees, as a percentage of the purchase price. Reason for asking is I think a good relationship is probably worth paying over the odds for, but I am unsure what the odds are! So a bit of benchmarking would be interesting.

FWIW I have been quoted 1.18% which should cover everything other than setting up the mortgage and paying the deposit... I think.

conveyancing...about £1000 isnt it?

Price of property isn't really relevant I thought.

Hard to tell without knowing the property price but, assuming it's in London, that seems steep.

The conveyancing isn't really a function of the property price. Twice the price isn't twice the work.

Conveyancing, straight forward freehold house. I paid £400 not including searches etc. As for relationship, all comms were directed through an iPhone app which logged all correspondence on the file and they scanned all letters etc to the app so I had PDFs a couple of days ahead of them arriving by second class post.

Yes would like to buy the freehold but my 80years runs out this summer and heard it takes months or years to do. Also not sure how they work out free hold cost but if it's based on what the lands worth then there's no way me and or the other flat owners could afford it.

wow...

Something to remember in 25 years time when I buy my next home...

I spoke to my solicitor, this is what I got back:

Noted and I agree. However with the history of this particular Seller I suspect getting any money out of him will be nigh on impossible. It will not even be worth trying.

Either way I have cleaned it up now and pulled down some dodgy dividing walls and ripped out carpets/pissed stained lino, making even more of a mess.

The first few hours of owning my own home has been... smelly

welcome to the joys of property ownership!!! Its so much better than renting im told!

sorry everyone, we are also not as rich as we thought we were

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/03/30/average-house-price-could-be-much-lower-than-currently-believed/

That sounds like them talking themselves out of doing their job. You don't work directly with the seller. That's their problem and they can go and speak to the associated people from the other side.

@howard @Ramsaye cheers. I've got a breakdown now which shows the actual conveyancing is 700 (excl vat) with the total figure including a variety of other things, the biggest of which is LBTT aka stamp duty, which is the aspect that is proportional to property price.

I think the amount I've been quoted is all I'd pay other than mortgage set-up fee (if applicable) and surveys cost (if needed; property in Scotland comes with a report on condition and repairs needed -not sure if that's the same in England but I guess not).

Cheers also. It's in Scotland so potentially not comparable to the experience of most on here. But as per my post above 700 for conveyancing doesn't seem excessive to me.

Sure yeah that's 'OK' - you can certainly get cheaper but you aren't being gouged. Shop around though if you can. There's little to be gained from being able to talk face to face really.

Not sure about the percentage on stamp duty - isn't it just a payment to hmrc via bacs or whatever?