Buy­ing a house can be expen­sive & time con­sum­ing. To avoid wast­ing mon­ey or time unnec­es­sar­i­ly, it’s impor­tant to hire the right pro­fes­sion­als. How­ev­er, it’s also impor­tant to per­son­al­ly plan your pur­chase from the very start.

It’s easy to start look­ing at poten­tial prop­er­ties but before you do, your ini­tial con­cern should be finance. You can either search for a mort­gage your­self or you can use a bro­ker. Giv­en it’s your first time, I would prob­a­bly do the lat­ter because broker’s often get spe­cial bro­ker only deals, and they will also be able to advise in regards to the Help to Buy scheme as an option.

Get an offer in prin­ci­ple & a clear grasp on the max­i­mum mort­gage amount you can bor­row (LTV – Loan to Val­ue), how much deposit you will put in and the cost per month/​affordability of both your mort­gage & asso­ci­at­ed own­er­ship costs. The lat­ter is crit­i­cal because you will need to fac­tor in reg­u­lar out­go­ings that you cur­rent­ly pay plus pre­dict­ed ones that are linked to home own­er­ship – coun­cil tax, util­i­ties etc. It is also cru­cial because as of last month, sig­nif­i­cant­ly more strin­gent checks will be done by the mort­gage lender on you – Mort­gage Mar­ket Review (MMR).

Once you have your offer in prin­ci­ple, you can start the excit­ing part of look­ing for your dream home. I would sug­gest cre­at­ing an ide­al prop­er­ty cri­te­ria such as area, size, type, price ect. You can reg­is­ter with some agents local to the areas but also search online.

To dis­cuss buy­ing a house, please get in touch with Rick Bar­row on 01625 523988 or mail@​JBGass.​com