Owning your own home

We paid £800 for full pack + move (local and not in London's London). Would do it again in a heartbeat.

We moved on the day the last stamp duty holiday ended. No movers available so had 2 vans, two lockups and moved everything myself over 4 days with my brother helping on moving day.
My wife had her appendix out the day I started packing.

Was in tears for most of it and close to a breakdown half way through. Pay someone and don't even blink at whatever it costs.

Before I make one anyone got a spreadsheet for working out various mortgage scenarios handy? Current fixed term expires in Feb, and we're thinking about moving any time from now until next summer so options seem to be something like:

1. Move early and pay small ERC, but possibly struggle to find a place due to quietening market towards Christmas.
   
2. Remortgage here and port to new place in spring next year (currently got 5.5% locked in) more fees?
   
3. Lapse on to SVR and start new mortgage in new place early spring next year.
   
4. Something I'm missing?
   
   

Possibly over thinking it and ultimately small differences won't sway us away from somewhere we really like, but just want to check in not gonna totally shaft myself.

Overthinking it I think unless you have a strong feeling rates are going up.
In your position I’d probably fall back to the SVR for a couple of months if I knew I was expecting to move imminently

Moving to a new deal within the same mortgage provider, it's been ages since I last did it - do they now do a full underwrite in this current climate, or is it still just a check of the house price index/automated valuation?

Wife went part time a couple of years into the mortgage so earnings are a few £k lower than they were a couple of years ago.

When I renewed last they just waved it through (First Direct)

Almost certainly, and I'm inclined to do that, but I need to do the sums at some point just to feel vindicated.

Obviously the biggest factor is finding the right place. Still kind of frustrated by the fact we have to have an offer to make an offer but maybe that's not entirely the case anymore in the current climate.

The minor faff with renewing and then porting is that you then will likely have 2 mortgages unless you’re able to cover the difference in the house prices, and that’ll then tie you in with a single lender until both were out of their initial period and you could get a new deal to cover both.
So you might be pushed into svr later on for a short while too

That's true, it would (hopefully) be more manageable in 2-5 years time as we'll not be paying 1k/month nursery fees, but yeah, not having the choice of the market would be potentially problematic especially as rates seem to be falling a bit - I'm seeing sub 5% 5 year deals now when the guy at L&C seemed pretty chuffed to get 5.5% a month ago.

possibly struggle to find a place due to quietening market towards Christmas.

market seems short of supply at the moment. nice places getting sold quickly and not much new stuff coming on.

Because people cannot afford to move right now, the interest rates are wild and the boom is slowing down. Were defo heading into this recession and not taking wild risks right now if you dont need to is the answer.

Yep, this is what we're feeling, despite what the agents say to the contrary, I think August is usually quiet anyway but was reading that it's been especially so this year.

Quite relieved to not be facing the prospect of bidding against >5 other people on every half decent property, and probably settling for something less than ideal. Plus if prices fall a given % across the board then the gap closes a bit between what we have and what we want.

We've never had to do anything when we've stayed with the same provider, other than confirm choices.

Friends of mine did something similar. They both went on a big holiday and came back jobless and mortgage was up. I think they forgot to mention the jobless part and just signed to the neal deal that was offered. They told me there were no further checks or issues at the time.

After many years of waiting, we've found a house we really like within budget. Yay!

Went to a viewing on Sunday, seller told us they already had an offer at full asking price, but were open to offers above asking price. We went in with an offer £10k above asking price, and the estate agent has now come back and said they'll do closed private bidding between us and the other potential buyer, and the highest wins. They've said we need to give our best offer right out, and the highest wins. Boo!

I've never made offers on a property via this method previously. My head says just say what you'd actually be happy to pay for it (and can afford), but my heart says I'll be gutted to go way over what the other potential buyer offers, but also gutted to miss out on the property if I go too low.

Does anyone have recent experience with this type of offer process, and have any wisdom to impart?

I'll be gutted to go way over what the other potential buyer offers, but also gutted to miss out on the property if I go too low.
... any wisdom to impart?

Only that a sealed-bid second-price auction should be revenue-equivalent (to the sealed-bit first price version) and specifically avoids the fear of over-bidding and all the second-guessing around that.

I don't know what the odds are that estate agents are keen on auction theory, though.

I don’t see how that’s different, ultimately it’s all bidding against other buyers competitively. Just bid what you think it’s worth to you.

Tell them to fuck off, private bidding. People get too attached to houses that isnt there and people selling sometimes know this and want to push on it.

At the end of the day its yous that's gotta stump up the extra, just dont go mental for something that you might be over paying for.

and the estate agent has now come back and said they'll do closed private bidding between us and the other potential buyer, and the highest wins

And then when the estate agent is phoning the loser to tell them that they've lost they'll say something along the lines of "you're only a few thousand too low - are you sure you can't go higher?".

Go too high and when you try and get the mortgage signed off / house valued the lender may say politely “no it’s not worth it”.

Leave your bid as it stands. They're just trying to extract ever greater quantities of money.

Yup, I second this. Never ever get into a bidding war, tell them it's final and be ready to walk.

Hmmm yeah, I hadn't considered that the mortgage company's valuer may come back with a lower valuation if we were to over pay for it. Presumably in that case you just have to negotiate it down with the seller, or they then have to go back and find another buyer?

Yeah, I'm not feeling great about the process they want me to enter into. As others have said, it seems designed to do nothing other than extract the maximum money out of me.

I'm considering telling them only to come and ask for my bid if the other buyer puts in an offer higher than what we've already offered. Otherwise I'm potentially kinda just bidding against myself. The other buyer might not be able to go any higher, or may refuse to take part.

It's interesting to look back at the land registry sold prices as well to see what things actually went for in the end - we were outbid on loads of places that it turns out we offered more for in the end, as the actual buyers managed to negotiate the price down after surveys etc I expect.

We completed on a house a month ago that we were outbid on (we really couldn't afford to go higher, even though it ticked all the boxes), then three months later the EA came back and said the higher bidders had pulled out, and we could have it if we were still interested.

Tldr- it's a mugs game