[HarryBD]

Local recommendations having bought in Baildon this Autumn.

Broker. We used Andrew Milnes at Mortgage Advice Bureau in Bingley. We were first time buyers and he was helpful at letting us know what to expect from the process, illustrating our options and recommended a local solicitor. I don't know what he normally charges and whether it's reasonable/worth it.

Solicitors we used Keely Moore at Eatons Solicitors - they did the job but were rubbish at replying to emails. Would answer the phone though and let us know the answer to any questions we had.

Survey we used Dan Brumfitt at Feather Smailes Scales - had a good turnaround and we haven't had any surprises that weren't on the survey.

[tomtom]

Solicitors: We’re mid purchase - that is potentially tricky (from what was a complex probate application - now sorted - and it’s an old house with many issues)

Because of this we went with a middle/upper price range local Manchester solicitors. They were initially really shit. But a factual yet blunt email pointing out the deficiencies saw our case handler change and she is really really good. So far 😂

Re price drop - if you want to be the fairest to the vendors - ask now. If you want it to be most effective wait until the last minute.

Either way you won’t be popular.

When I last sold the buyers basically forced me to drop £5k at the last min on some bullshit (it was bullshit) about the electrics but I was in no position to refuse as I had to sell. I thought they were cunts for that.

[sdm]

1) What's the thinking these days about going through a mortgage broker vs comparison websites and going direct to the bank? Do brokers save a lot of hassle and secure better deals?

A good broker will save time and hassle.

They are unlikely to achieve anything that you couldn't achieve yourself with some research and legwork.

Not all brokers have access to all lenders and some lenders don't use brokers at all and are only available direct.

Would probably be looking at the smallest possible mortage that allows us to make use of Help to Buy ISA / LISA and then borrow the rest from family if that makes any difference.

Some lenders are wary of using gifts from family to make up a deposit in case they demand it back. It's fine to do but they are likely to require you to sign a contract to say it is a gift and cannot be expected to be repaid.

They accepted asking price but another very similar house in the same street went for £20k less just a month ago (we only found this out after putting the offer in).

Are the two houses the same in size, layout, location and upkeep? Are the situations of the buyer and seller the same?

The two houses might be worth the same but being on the same street is no guarantee that they are.

When would be a good time to start trying to get the price down?

Before having an offer accepted. You can change your offer any time before exchange of contracts but lowering the price now without a good reason (e.g. a survey uncovering unknown issues) is a dick move and you risk pissing off the seller.

If you are going to do it, do it ASAP while there is still time for them to find another buyer if they decide to pull out of the sale and while you haven't invested too much time, money and emotion on a property you don't end up buying.

The vendors are probably in more of a rush to move than we would be as the stamp duty holiday is irrelevant for us.

The general assumption in the market is that the stamp duty holiday is likely to be extended anyway (although possible on reduced terms, similar to the reduction of furlough over the summer).

The vaccines may be rolled out in time to make an extension unnecessary but government policy is pretty much to prop up house prices at all costs.

[ali k]

Yeh I totally understand dropping the price is shit. Not sure if this makes me less of a bad person but the offer was made on condition that they take it off the market as we didn't want to get into a bidding war. 6 days later (and counting) and it's still up there despite providing them with everything they've asked for in terms of proof of mortgage in principle, proof of deposit, ID checks etc. on the day the offer was made.

[abarro81]

I've used them twice now for house buying and I've never been able to get similar rates myself direct.

Interesting... can you normally go to them with a "beat this" without paying them anything, or does it not normally work like that?

Some lenders are wary of using gifts from family to make up a deposit in case they demand it back. It's fine to do but they are likely to require you to sign a contract to say it is a gift and cannot be expected to be repaid.

+1 on this - my mum gave us some money towards the house and had to sign something confirming that (at least as far as the law/bank was concerned) it was a gift and not a loan

[RobK]

Yeh I totally understand dropping the price is shit.

It is, and you will get a lot of people telling you how shit it is having been on the end of it. I would be one of them!

However.

Property negotiations are tricky. It is rarely something that most people have much experience in. I mean, how many times are you realistically going to do it?! So if you got it wrong, I wouldn't let your morals and willingness to be a nice buyer get in the way of any re-negotiation. I'm guessing the amount of money you want to drop by is not insignificant to you. Ask yourself, is £5-10k (or whatever it is you're wanting to drop by) really worth being nice over? Don't beat yourself up about it. And if the vendor has any amount of nous about them, they won't be expecting plain sailing. Personally I would be prefer to be upfront about it but, as TT says, last minute can be incredibly effective. If not properly cuntish. (but if you piss them off too much, they may just back out due to principle!)

[Paul B]

Interesting... can you normally go to them with a "beat this" without paying them anything, or does it not normally work like that?

First time the fee was tiny £75 but even that I don't think it was paid until you took a mortgage forward (this was via Shark's advisor at the time). This time it was more but I believe the same applied (I'd have to check though).

In both instances I'd also done the leg work looking myself (and with my existing mortgage provider this time as it was taking on a second mortgage temporarily).

Personally I would be prefer to be upfront about it but, as TT says, last minute can be incredibly effective. If not properly cuntish. (but if you piss them off too much, they may just back out due to principle!)

It can also cause the whole chain to come crashing down. My folks are currently buying a new-build and if their buyer did this their chain would likely collapse and they'd be out the deposit on the extras.

[ali k]

Ask yourself, is £5-10k (or whatever it is you're wanting to drop by) really worth being nice over?

That's what we keep going over and over. It's not in our nature, but £10k could pay for a lot of the work we want to do on it.

Are the two houses the same in size, layout, location and upkeep? Are the situations of the buyer and seller the same?
The two houses might be worth the same but being on the same street is no guarantee that they are.

Yeh we've been comparing them for exactly this. No idea about the situation of buyer/seller but the houses are very very similar. One has huge tanked basement, the other has a second ensuite bathroom and in slightly better location on the street but without a bay window in the living room that the other has. Other than that exact layout and upkeep.

We've basically been talking about what the best thing to do is for the last 6 days and not much else!

[spidermonkey09]

I know another broker who I can put you in touch with if you like Ali. He has been nothing short of a genius for various members of my family who had differing mortgage requirements.

Having been on the end of various shady practices regarding last minute price drops I would definitely mention it sooner rather than later. If it works, then great, if it doesn't at least you haven't made yourself feel like a twat by doing it at the last minute. That said, 20k is a big difference. 

[Will Hunt]

I love how everyone on this forum is a card-carrying Corbyn-cuddling commie when discussing politics, and when push comes to shove it turns out that they're cold, calculating, callow capitalists who aren't above exploiting the desperation of others to save them a buck.

[tomtom]

I love how everyone on this forum is a card-carrying Corbyn-cuddling commie when discussing politics, and when push comes to shove it turns out that they're cold, calculating, callow capitalists who aren't above exploiting the desperation of others to save them a buck.

Is it your house that’s being sold Will 😂

Gotta say - what you’ve written is a pretty weird interpretation of all the posts I’ve read....

[Will Hunt]

It's only a slightly more direct way of saying what lots of people have already said. Dropping the bid at the last hour when everything else is agreed is a cunty thing to do, but who wouldn't be a cunt for £10k?

I'm a cunt every day of my life and I don't charge a penny.


But seriously, if it was me and I honestly felt like I'd made a mistake with the offer then I would raise it at the earliest opportunity and see what the seller says. If they don't budge then it's up to me to decide whether it's worth it. Houses, if you're going to live in it and raise a family in it, are important and the right one is well worth sticking an extra 5 or 10k on the mortgage for.

That said, I think Ali's reasoning is a bit skew. So another house on the street sold for 20k less? So what? Different house, different sellers, different buyers. The two situations, unless we're talking about a new build bought from the same developer, are probably not comparable. An object is worth what someone is willing to pay for it. If you made the offer then that's probably indicative of what the house was worth to you, unless you weren't thinking straight at the time for whatever reason.

Completely off topic. Today my parents moved out of the house that my brother and I spent our whole childhoods in. They'd been there for 36 years. Houses are so much more than piles of bricks. The door to the utility room where people's height was ritualistically recorded, bearing a hundred biro marks charting the upward progress of their two boys, and their boys' friends, and of mum and dad and Grandma and Grandpa and everyone else. The garden where we had water fights with Andrew from over the road, and where we played and fell off the slide and sprained our wrists, and where we would fire rockets into next door's far-too-tall conifers. The bedrooms where we sulked, or courted our girlfriends, or woke up excited on Christmas morning. And every other nook and cranny bursting with memories and emotions.
When you see the right house you know it and you just have to do what's necessary to get the keys.

[jshaw]

I love how everyone on this forum is a card-carrying Corbyn-cuddling commie when discussing politics, and when push comes to shove it turns out that they're cold, calculating, callow capitalists who aren't above exploiting the desperation of others to save them a buck.

champagne *cough* socialism *cough cough*  (not that I'm any better...)

On topic: when we bought our house (competitive market) we had the opposite done to us. The seller's estate agent turned round and wanted an extra few k because "another buyer" had "offered a better price". I've always suspected that this was just the estate agent squeezing the price to make the seller happy, or something. I appreciate it's not the same sums as you're talking about but we were happy to pay as we really liked the house, location etc and had been outbid on others previously.

If you're already considering that the house isn't worth what you offered, maybe it's worth thinking if it's actually this particular house you want.

[tomtom]

Maybe armchair house sale eclipses armchair problem grading?? 😀

Our (hopefully soon to be exchanged) purchase is without any estate agents being involved. It’s been a far more pleasurable experience and a fair part of the process has been building trust between us and the vendors.

Next door but one went last week. Sealed bids. All above the asking price. Glad I’m not got in that shitty game.

When I was forced to drop the price (as mentioned earlier) I had to de emotionalise the whole transaction to stop me going bonkers (it’s just business etc.. etc..) but it needn’t be that way.

Just like in business - there are companies, shops etc.. that don’t act as if they are trying to screw the last penny out of someone.

Just because some people think they’re Donald Trimp when trying to close that sale - doesn’t mean everyone has to.

[T_B]

The whole system of buying and selling houses is ridiculous. I really thought after the financial crash that would be the end of traditional estate agents. Same goes for brokers of straightforward financial products that can be marketed/researched online easily. Very little value brought to the party in the internet age.

Edit. That’s being too kind to estate agents. The whole ‘closed bids’ bollocks prevalent in Sheffield was/is used to drive up prices as they’d ring you up for the so called “best and final offer”. Totally corrupt in my view.

[nik at work]

Fuck off you had girlfriends. Hunt 😂

[ali k]

I love how everyone on this forum is a card-carrying Corbyn-cuddling commie when discussing politics, and when push comes to shove it turns out that they're cold, calculating, callow capitalists who aren't above exploiting the desperation of others to save them a buck.

I'm just a tight Yorkshireman who doesn't want to pay over the odds. They're the ones saving £10k in stamp duty! Not exactly exploiting desperation.

Anyway we haven't done anything yet, we're still waiting to hear from them before we decide what to do. And they're clearly keeping the house on to see if they can get better offers despite the condition of our offer being to take it off the market, so the longer that goes on the less bad I'll feel if we decide to squeeze them.

We immediately offered asking to avoid going to sealed bids like other houses we've looked at have. Otherwise we may as well have just taken a punt and offered below asking, with a view to raise it for best and final if needs be - that was our reasoning at the time.

Definitely useful hearing other opinions though.

[galpinos]

I properly hate the english house buying/selling system.

Are you just buying a house or wanting to join a community? Being a dick to one of my neighbours (this happened to a neighbour/friends on my last street, 10k knocked off offer as buyer had no chain and they, our friends, were in a chain for dream house) does not endear you to the people who already live there.

If you are going to drop your offer, do so now.

[Ru]

If your offer was conditional on them taking it off the market, and they haven't done that, then your offer wasn't really accepted. Presumably they've done that with a mind to changing their mind if they get a better offer. I don't see the moral difficulty with you making a different offer if they didn't fully accept your first one and they have one eye on doing the same back to you. That said, don't be surprised if they do the same back to you, possibly after you have invested some cash into the transaction.

[Bradders]

Had an offer on a house accepted this week. Still debating whether to go ahead with it or not but probably need to start looking at mortgages, solicitors and surveys.

I've only skimmed the rest of the thread but this stuck out at me; if you're not really sure about the place, why have you made an offer? When the right one comes around, in my (limited) experience you know it's the one. Do you really want somewhere you're not sure about? I think Will is on the money, when it's the one paying a little more is neither here nor there in the long run.

Especially so if you're likely to be overpaying. Drop the price now (they can only say no), or get out while you've not spent any money on it.

[Bradders]

If you do stick with it, I've used Ryan Property Law in Pudsey twice recently and thought they were great. Only 20 mins from Saltaire.

[ali k]

if you're not really sure about the place, why have you made an offer? When the right one comes around, in my (limited) experience you know it's the one. I think Will is on the money, when it's the one paying a little more is neither here nor there in the long run.

Thanks Bradders. We both absolutely loved the place and were grinning at each other as we were going round (not in sight of the agent obvs) so it definitely fired something up. And that's why we were keen to secure it. I don't think we're doubting the house.

It's only after that when (a) we found out what the other house went for so were feeling like mugs, and (b) they didn't take it off the market as agreed, that doubts started to creep in.

At the moment I don't feel like we have a decision to make - as Ru says we feel like the offer hasn't been properly accepted, and no money has been spent.

[mrjonathanr]

Re price drop - if you want to be the fairest to the vendors - ask now. If you want it to be most effective wait until the last minute.

Either way you won’t be popular.

If someone did this to me as a vendor, I would assume them to be untrustworthy. How the vendor reacts is hard to predict, but if you go back on your word, you have to be aware they may see that as the green light to do likewise if they get a better offer.

Personally, if in the position to, I would drop the sale as the buyer is likely to cause more hassles the further the process advanced.

The reverse is also true:

It's only after that when (a) we found out what the other house went for so were feeling like mugs, and (b) they didn't take it off the market as agreed, that doubts started to creep in.

If they don’t keep their word at the start they may well not keep it later. I would be tempted to withdraw and if it stays on the market come back with the price you really want to pay. There are other houses that will suit you.

[Bradders]

Ah fair play then, glad you've found somewhere you like.

I would still go back with a revised offer, but make sure if you do that you give crystal clear reasons for doing so (which you certainly have). At least then it's harder for them to think you're messing them around, and you're hopefully helping with their decision making by spelling it out.

[Paul B]

You mention the figure paying for a lot of work you want to do. I'm taking it that's improvement work rather than required work (which would be a legitimate negotiation point after a survey)? PS I think surveys are shit.

Will has highlighted why comparing the two houses is fraught with issues; it's not the same house/sale/owner etc.

The last two purchases we've had the same issue with the property not being taken off the market quickly. The previous purchase was ask but to be taken off before the weekend with four viewings scheduled. They didn't and at that point you've clearly shown what you can afford.

This one, the agent was just totally shit at getting it off and it took a call to make the point that our offer hadn't been accepted if they didn't. This didn't stop the vendor showing another buyer around a week or so later and then hitting us with a revised ask up to the point where another k and our short term finances were unworkable.