Owning your own home

pic of screen: http://www.splashdirect.com/5-panel-semi-frameless-folding-bath-screen-5820/

Much hinge

the hinge meant impingement

Yay! Looks like this Friday is fucked!

Turns out there is a delay in the purchase of the place our vendor is buying, even though the paperwork submitted to our solicitor explicitly states that the sale of the flat we are buying is not dependent on the vendor buying somewhere else.

For once it is my solicitor who is the only one answering the phone.

Yaaaaayyyyyy!

Sorry to hear that Stevo. But when you finally do move in, imagine how that will feel!

@Apone, that shower screen looks ace and we will be putting a new bathroom in a place we are trying to buy, if it all goes well. Are you in a rush to get shot of it?

Problem is I have no idea what kind of delay it is. If it's a day or two, grand. If it's a couple of months, our mortgage offer expires.

Vendor's son is due to call me when he gets out of work.

Sounds like a right mess.

We're still waiting for our solicitor to hear back from vendor's solicitors with the queries which were raised. It seems that every time the ball is in their court everything grinds to a halt. They've probably sent out crucial documents via second class post again.

Got my appointment to properly submit my mortgage application tomorrow (on the phone). Anyone applied to Nationwide recently? Any idea how long it might take to hear back from?

Ours is with Nationwide, though we did it through a broker. The agreement/decision in principle took about half an hour, and the offer about another week after that, after various documents etc were requested.

I was quite impressed though I wasn't dealing with them directly, lots of updates by text and a detailed mortgage offer in the post immediately after we'd been accepted.

What are you buying?

A friends purchase, which was due to complete this Friday is now fucked.

Solicitors.again.

Vendors sols didn't notice that the garden wasn't included in the Land Registry details, despite it being included in the mortgage valuation. As she is buying a maisonette (leasehold), her Sols need to liaise with the vendors sols, who then need to refer to the freeholders sols. I don't expect this being resolved any time soon...Ouch.

Crap Solicitors Bro

We're currently entertaining 2 mortgage brokers, one says his costs are £95 although I'm led to believe this is slightly mates rates.

The other wants 1% of the mortgage value up to £2,500 (ours will be £2,500).
The reason for this is the 2nd one will manage our mortgage for the lifetime, and essentially guarantees that we will pay it off earlier, he'll always be monitoring, making sure we're on the best mortgage for our circumstances, etc etc but each time we change a mortgage (on his recommendation for our benefit) it will cost another £195.

I understand the benefit of the 2nd one, but I want to know if anyone has gone for that sort of thing on here and whether they'd recommend it.

Adding £2,500 to a £275,000 mortgage seems like a drop in an ocean but I'm always put off by a hard sell and this guy was definitely on one.

Got a meeting with him this afternoon, and I guess if he doesn't come up with any better offers than the cheaper one already has, then that kind of answers my question.

After writing it out and reading it back I'm already feeling cynical

I'm always cynical, but after reading it I'm certainly sceptical the second broker will actually provide that level of service after the commission's been paid.

That's exactly my feelings. I think I meant to say sceptical there.

Dont pay for a mortgage broker.
Get one that gets their fee from the lender.

£2.5k is fucking ridiculous.

I'm cynical that a mortgage broker would be offering a service worth even £90.

manage our mortgage for the lifetime

LOL

You shouldn't be paying a mortgage broker a single penny.

From your percentages stated he will be getting between £2k and £5k from the lender as commission.

This one will be getting a fee from the lender too.

OK I'm glad everyone feels the same as I did listening to his spiel.

Pie them both off @NurseHolliday...

If you want, you can have a chat with my old man who is an IFA.
He's helped a couple of forum types get mortgages sorted, and given a couple more some advice which they have then taken away and done their own thing with.

He will give you completely objective advice on what the best financial products for you will be and will never ask you for a penny.
Yes - he will get a commission IF you do go through him to organise the mortgage but, as an independent IFA with all the letters, exams and moral/ethical responsibility that comes with them, he will give you the best advice for your needs not for his own commission.

#PitchOver

Never paid a mortgage broker anything, I assume our IFA got commission from the lender.

I opt for long term (~5 years) fixed deals so we know exactly what we'll need to pay and don't have to worry about whether we're on the right deal or not. Sometimes it works out, sometimes we end up paying more, but I'm quite risk averse and the lack of fluctuation suits me.

At the recent renewal time the current lender (Santander) came forward with a offer to get out of the existing fixed deal 3 months early to move to another 5 year fixed at 2.89%. The single fee for this was less than the difference in interest payments for those 3 months so it was an obvious choice. It was also done in one 20 minute phone call with no need for valuations/etc. I couldn't match 2.89% anywhere else (especially as ours is interest only[1]) so I was practically biting their hands off.

When it came to this offer the IFA was happy to look through all of the figures and say that he couldn't beat it and advised us to go with it, even though he didn't earn a penny from doing so.

1. We make appropriate overpayments to treat it just like a repayment mortgage but have the flexibility of stopping (the overpayments) if we need to and then making up for the missed capital repayment when we're flush again. (It helps that we no longer have nursery fees to pay!)
   

OK I'm possibly getting my terminologies confused. £95 guy is an IFA and that is the fee for the application. I do relatively trust this guy as he is an old family friend of a friend. That doesn't make him magically trustworthy, but better than someone random.

£2.5k dude is someone my gf found online. I'm leaning much more towards sacking him off right now.