Buying a flat, getting a mortgage, and the BS that comes with it...

bazxkr

I'm surprised you can find that in London for £900 seems cheap to me...I'd have thought £1200 + or more TBH

Still, beats the £3.5k a month in Manhattan for an apartment when my daughter left uni & worked in NYC for 5 months. Big city prices are absurd in all 'Western' nations.

Fretwired

You're better off investing your hard earned cash in a central London property that will appreciate in value rather than living further out and squandering your cash on what passes for public transport - expensive, overcrowded and stressful.

chrispy108

Fair enough, always good to think of other options and work out what you really want, especially for a decision this big.

It sounds like you're not that into it though, which probably isn't the right frame of mind to make this big a decision in?

My wife is desperate to buy something, and has been for ages. I'm not in such a hurry.

Sambostar

Can you not get some work outside Durham and buy a nice 4 bed house in the country?  New builds have paper thin, internal dividing walls and rooms are tiny.

Or what about Chelmsford, Brentwood, Romford and Ilford?  Used to be faster on the train in than from east to the city IIRC and driving is ten times faster than the North Circular.

Deijavoo

Bought a house two years ago and had to sell most of my guitars to fund the deposit. I'm now through the worst of this and back in the GAS game. 

Plus I live in one of the cheapest areas of the UK. 

Good luck Mr and Mrs FX. 

bazxkr

I thought Cumbria was expensive due to everyone wanting to live near the Lake district ? Perhaps I'll retire & come join you. Where should I look ? Ulverston ??

Deijavoo said:

Bought a house two years ago and had to sell most of my guitars to fund the deposit. I'm now through the worst of this and back in the GAS game. 

Plus I live in one of the cheapest areas of the UK. 

Good luck Mr and Mrs FX. 

stickyfiddle

I feel for you. We were paying around 2k a month for our old 2-bed in E3. Lovely place but hella expensive - similar ones in the same building were selling for 400k or so when we were there. You'd get a castle for that up north!

Not sure I'd want to buy at the moment, London or otherwise. London feels safer than the rest of the country but it still feels risky.

Deijavoo

Ah that's in the Lakes or near Sellafield. 

I'm up in the Big Smoke. I still love it here and can't see me living anywhere else in Britain anytime soon. 

capo4th

One sentence of advice. Check the ground rent for the property and maintenance fees. When we sold our flat for £365000 in 2007 the yearly fees were just shy of £2000 a year. Thankfully we made £145000 on the sale after living there for 4 years which allowed us to buy a larger house. A friend has just bought a new build with fees of £1500 they are set to rise to £1675 in 2015. My advice buy a freehold property.

capo4th

I will also add that most property inside the M25 seems to be £100k 200k over priced on 4 bedroom houses at the moment. Flats probably £50k a great time to be an estate agent houses selling themselves as everyone is desperate to cash in and move so houses are selling quickly

boogieman

We've just decided not to move. It would have meant giving £45k away in stamp duty, legal fees and estate agent costs etc. Sod that, rather spend it extending what we've got, plus a bit extra for the gas fund.

Phil_aka_Pip

@boogieman you live in a castle?? I thought £10k for my last move was expensive!

littlegreenman

Drew_fx said:

So this morning they say that because my wifes visa - ILTR (indefinite leave to remain) - is on her expired passport, that they wont lend to her unless she gets a biometric residence permit. Nevermind that her two passports are bloody stapled together!!

That is proper BS! ILR is a residency status and doesn't change, the clue is in the name, "indefinite" (OK, it can be revoked if you're a serious criminal or terrorist, but your missus looks unlikely to fit that category). 

From the HO website: "You don’t have to transfer your visa - you can carry both your old and new passports when travelling to or from the UK instead.".

So it's good enough for exit and entry purposes, but not for financing a mortgage? I'd be looking for a different mortgage advisor before anything else.

Grunfeld

Drew_fx said:

She wants this flat that isn't even built yet.... But for London it is pretty cheap. If all this does go through, we'll end up oweing money to several people and paying a fair amount more than we currently do...

I bought a flat earlier this year and son of Grün is buying one right now.  It's a bit stressful even when it's straight-forward.

When I was looking to buy it's easy as a non-professional property buyer to get caught up in the whole mindset of "I've got to have this one."  *Stress*... got to be this one.... there will never be this one again. 

I was stressing like that on the way back from a gig and me bass player says, "Don't worry about it.  Flats and houses, there's loads of them.  Every street you go down is full of them."  And it's genius:  If you don't get one... there will be another!

Good luck with it Drew.  Don't stress about it.  But might be best not to commit to something you're not truly comfortable with at the moment.

boogieman

Phil_aka_Pip;332827" said:

@boogieman you live in a castle?? I thought £10k for my last move was expensive!

Yeah I know Phil, house prices here (Surrey) are stupid. We had the place valued a while back and the agent said £635K and it would probably go in a fortnight. Anywhere we'd buy would be plus 4% stamp duty. Add in agents fees of nearly £20k and it all starts to get ridiculous.

PolarityMan

Stamp duty is a monumental pisser

Phil_aka_Pip

PolarityMan said:

Stamp duty is a monumental ripoff

corrected for you

PolarityMan

those things arent mutually exclusive

mellowsun

Stamp duty is often the deal breaker, particularly if you have a lot of equity in an existing place allowing you (notionally) to trade up to a more expensive place, you realise you can't because although the mortgage might be affordable, finding 20-30K in stamp duty isn't.

Evilmags

900 a month in London is very cheap. From experience the way to buy in London is to look for something wrecked and build value into it by refurbishing. Buying new build is quite risky.