Reply With QuoteThey probably have your account tagged as dodgey then. ;-)Originally Posted by wileeeeeey
Ha, same bank! It was only for about 5k too.
They probably have your account tagged as dodgey then. ;-)
I can relate to that! Good luck with the move.
We moving in at the end of November after owning both properties for 3 months, downsizing from a spacious 4 bed house to a 3 bed bungalow with lots of garden/ outside space but a bit small inside. We have a builder lined up and plans drawn for a significant extension but the planning application has been ‘delayed’, local council haven’t pulled their finger out despite the application being very straightforward with no objections and no contentious issues. The original aim to start work next week has had to be rescheduled, can’t say I’m too sorry as I’m still getting sorted out after moving in and a few more disruption- free weeks will be nice. Wrong time of year, I’ve been trying to get a few problems with the garage fixed but it’s too damned cold, the garage had to be altered to make room for the extension so we had to crack on despite the weather. Ideally I would've scrapped the garage and had a new one, refurbishing a concrete section building is harder than I expected, it’s a job for warm dry weather not wet cold December.
Mighty relieved to get the old house sold, owning two was a worry, I suspect we could’ve got more money but priority was to get it done.
Who knows where the property markets heading, I’m happy to have bought and sold for similar values over a short timeframe.
[Skyman]
Just buy the house using your credit card.
[/Skyman]
Probably. Joint account and we both have one own accounts so almost zero transactions. I've never even used my debit card for it.Peasant, don't you know the Black Card is a charge card and not a credit card? Totally different.
(Getting a platinum charge card a few years ago with no existing credit card and only a £50 overdraft absolutely ruined my credit score for almost a year which is the only reason I know the difference. Your % of credit in use is important and when your credit available is £0 and your credit in use is £1k etc your % in use goes mental and your score plummets quicker than a German wings flight).
Still seems to be going strong!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55483432
saying that ive seen a few properties come back onto the market recently that were 'SSTC' - for them to find another buyer and complete before the SDLT holiday is a big task!
I've given up trying to make sense of it all.
Our house is currently Sold STC and, I admit, we're getting panicky in case the buyer decides to pull out for any reason because, if he did, I think there's zero chance of getting another sale before the stamp duty holiday ends. Everyone is saying a drop in house prices come the end of March and we're already seeing price drops appearing on properties we saved on rightmove. The buyer came back at the start of the week with 19 new questions. 19! He's now saying things like because of the age of the property he wants an electrical safety certificate. Well, as our estate agent and solicitor says, what is an electrical safety certificate?
It's a very stressful time. We've sold 5 properties in our time and this is definitely the most traumatic and stressful.
It's what is required if you rent out a property.
This is a decent description: https://householdquotes.co.uk/electr...y-certificate/
Mr Gardner seams to think the tax-free facility is a bit......... secondary.
"The furlough and Self Employment Income Support schemes provided vital support for the labour market, while a host of measures helped to keep down the cost of borrowing and keep the supply of credit flowing," said Robert Gardner, Nationwide's chief economist.
Mr Gardner said the stamp duty holiday also stimulated demand, by bringing forward peoples' home-moving plans."
I doubt if furloughed people were prioritising house purchases.
What blackal said, should be no more than a couple of hundred pounds (if you can find someone), also he may ask for a gas safety certificate - again its what rental properties require. Might be worth getting them done together pre-emptively if you think he may ask for that aswell.
I bet a lot of those were because the prospective buyers couldn't get a mortgage. The lenders almost seem to be acting responsibly regarding LTV, and while high LTV mostgages are available, interest rates are a lot higher than those with a higher equity percentage.
Thank goodness someone is, iirc the PM was recently spaffing on about the reintroduction of 95 percent mortgages for FTB's.
There is a petition doing the rounds with 46,000 signatures asking the Government to extend the SDLT relief by a further 6 months.
Says it all really, we have a market in which prices are at an all time high, affordability at an all time low, a mountain of debt to re-pay and yet a petition to fuel the fire even more. Must be house builders....
Fortunately, the Government don't seem to be biting and hopefully won't!
The one house was in the region of £500k which is relevant to the area but not the average price, so whoever was buying this place wasnt a FTB and likely to be in a chain, makes me wonder if it was someone further down the ladder that caused the domino fall upwards.
a shame for all involved unfortunately
I spoke to an agent yesterday who was absolutely certain SDLT would NOT be extended. I must admit I can’t really see a reason why it would be
Sounds like an agent telling people to *buy now, don't delay!*
Agents pfft about as credible as Rolex AD's.
Nah quite the opposite - he said entering into a chain at this stage was probably too late to be completed by the end of March anyway. I then asked him if he thought there would be an extension and he said no.
Pretty much the first estate agent I’ve ever actually warmed to!
Fair enough. We're chain free and buying a chain free property (freehold) and don't know for sure that we'll be able to make the deadline. Everything is done - conveyancing and mortgage offer etc - but still waiting on searches...
Good luck, I hope you do. But at the end of the day while £15k isn’t to be sniffed at, it still represents a low single figure percentage of the whole deal and even less as you get more expensive. I think a lot of people are going to be forgetting the bigger picture and making rash decisions right now just to save a few grand.
The market is the same basket case it’s been for decades now and I doubt that’s going to change much
And a new article today;
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55586080
Good luck on getting it done, if you don't then you can be confident that the sellers agent will be advising his client to expect you to reduce your offer if you don't make the deadline through no fault of your own and to be accommodating. At the very least any seller would be sensible to offer to share the cost of the extra SDLT with a buyer to get a deal done, current pricing in most cases has simply added the SDLT saving to the agreed price, so they would still be likely to be getting more than they would if the deal fell through and they had to sell to a new party.
Chains will be a lot more difficult, what should happen is for everyone to compromise if circumstances change, but there will always be someone that wants the full amount, failing to recognise that others won't carry the burden. The Scottish system is SO much more effective at getting deals done, chains can be a royal pain reliant on all parties to work to a common goal.
Yeah, not to be sniffed at but not a reason to buy a house either. If we make it through we'll get new windows or the driveway done, if we don't well just save up after we've bought.I think a lot of short sighted people are going to get battered over this. Some will pay the full amount, others will split it with the vendor or demand the £15k off etc but you'd have to be an idiot to lose a house (by choice) over £15 on stamp assuming the house is £500k or more.
It will depend on how stubborn the buyers and sellers are and how much they don't want to break their chain/how bad they want the next house. If I was a vendor and the buyer wanted to renegotiate so I could help pay *their* stamp duty for them I'd probably tell them to f off. I might give a grand or two for the sake or if but other than that I'd say GTFO.
Saying that I tried to tell someone to GTFO when buying 6 years ago but my wife crying her eyes out made me suck it up. In hindsight it was the cheapest £10k I've ever taken on the chin.
Rationality so often goes out the window when it comes to houses, they're freighted with emotion.
Yep, logic and emotion have never been able to coexist. Always one or the other.
If I was a vendor I'd look at what my realistic options are if the sale falls through. If the price that was agreed was inflated because buyers can pay more because of not having to pay SDLT then I'd offer to help, as know it's still better than the alternative of what I can realistically sell to a new party for.
But then if I was a buyer, I'd have made it clear that the price offered was predicated off completing before the SDLT relief is removed. It is a unique set of circumstances and different to no change in SDLT and a buyer looking to re-negotiate for no reason, the SDLT relief has essentially been benefitting BOTH buyer AND seller through enhanced pricing.
Our buyers had two sets of surveys done (property and valuation, damp readings done at both) back in August and September and this week my solicitor passed me a question asking if I would get the company who did the original proofing to come and remediate a 'high damp meter reading in the lounge party wall' before sale as it was under a 30 year warranty that only had 5 years left to run - safe to say, I can't see any signs of damp at all in the location and the company is long since gone, so I'm hoping this is just them seeing whether or not it could be done under that and not something that the buyers have suddenly got twitchy about and want money off given that they've had the survey results for months! Ironically, I used the survey results I had done on the house which stated damp to knock £1500 quid off, but have yet to need to treat anywhere in my 10 years of ownership.
If we miss the March deadline, I don't know where we'll be at as the vendors estate agent seemed to indicate that all buyers in the chain above required the saving to make their deals work - certainly for us, having to put down £14000 in SDLT we hoped to avoid would potentially wipe out our up-front ability to decorate and furnish the house (coming from a 2 bed terrace, there's not much we'd be keeping as most of the furniture was bought second hand/inherited/gifted or deemed disposable by the wife) and cause us to reapply for a higher mortgage amount to bake that cost into the loss of that money from our deposit. Sure we're talking about a single digit percentage, but I can see why people will be banging a drum to make sure those costs aren't borne by themselves if they've already got agreements for lending in place that will suffer as a result.
Emotion for you, re-enforced by your stunted swear words within G&D.
Some logic would be good though
As would some Watch Talk contributions from you :)
I wish - this only works in some areas of the country. I got no price gain at all in marketing my property from it's mortgage valuation two years ago and it's agreed sale price is still £1000 lower than the house opposite that sold for £190k 18 months ago. To have priced it any higher would have been to have not bothered listing it at all because of the unique nature of Portsmouth terraces and postcode envy - the difference between a PO1 postcode and a PO5 postcode is somewhere between 10-20k for exactly the same properties south of the train tracks, just to call yourself Southsea...
And without SDLT relief it would almost certainly have been worth even less, which means the current pricing with relief is enhanced vs where pricing would sit without relief.
Cheers.... c. £400 quid then (inc. VAT). Our solicitor is worried this might open up a can of worms because the majority of the wiring has got to be 30+ years old. Certainly the consumer unit looks old though I did replace the wired fuses with the trip devices... mainly so it was easier for me to switch rings off. I can well imagine a sparks looking at it and saying something like 'well it's okay but it is old and needs replacing' - cue a £500 bill for a days work :-(
It was probably something raised by the buyer's survey - either through the general caveat about getting the circuitry checked that the basic surveys contain or because the surveyor thought there might actually be something that may need addressing. I think the general advice nowadays is to have the electrics checked every ten years or each time it is sold.
Even if you pay £400 plus £500 to have the latest consumer unit fitted that’s still only £1k and in the context of a property deal that’s not much. I wouldn’t be happy about it but I suggest you keep your eye on the prize and do what’s necessary to get your deal over the line.
Having just completed a move myself I know exactly what it’s like, it’s a fraught process, but you have to avoid cutting off your nose to spite your face, buyers have to be treated like gods. Solicitors don’t help, we had some stupid questions raised but we just had to keep playing ball, it’s a crooked game but its the only game in town so you just have to play along.
Times have changed.... These are questions we've never been asked on previous house sales and, tbh, we never asked when we did another house purchase 18 months ago. However we did have a sparks round for some advice and he pointed out the consumer was last generation and could do with swapping BUT there was nothing wrong with leaving it alone! Actually the guy was really helpful. For example we talked of rerunning some T&E that was in conduit down the corner of the lounge and he said well I can do it but it's not rocket science so I'm sure you can do it yourself. Ditto running two new sockets... same advice! Plus there was no charge for the visit!
Going back to the house sale... I think our agent is going to offer going 50/50 on the new consumer unit work. So we knock £500 off the house price and the problem goes away. tbh I'd be perfectly happy with that. House selling is too stressful as it is!
I think I would get one done super-fast, even before agreeing to it.
See what the survey coughs up before divulging anything to the buyer.
It's really the buyer's burden to satisfy himself that all is good in respect to the electrics, so I suspect that he is trying to gouge you and agreeing to the survey before carrying it out - plays into his hands.
This guy had a THREE HOUR survey!!!
We got the nod from the survey that the property was fine and nothing to worry about. If it's anything like the last survey we had done then they always include a blanket statement saying the electrics weren't tested and it's up to the client to decide if that needs doing. Obviously we never got to see the survey but I'm sure there was something like this in there plus a caveat that the consumer unit was 'last generation'. I think he's trying it on but he's desperate to get this all completed asap because he's in rented at the moment and he doesn't want to commit to another 6 months rent. Plus, of course, he wants it all completed before the end of march. I think a 50/50 offer for a new consumer unit and he'll be perfectly happy.
SDLT on £190k is £1300 (in normal times- 2% of £65,000) so not much saving to be had anyway on this purchase.
With these situations, its better to bend a bit for the buyer and get it sorted, in the future you will be thankful to get it all sorted, the last thing you want is for it to fall through. Yes, it may be a bit of a nuisance getting it sorted but think about the bigger picture (even if you have to pay for the full cost).
We were offering on a house back in November. Seller pulled out as they didn’t get the house they wanted. We are still interested but would obv knock off the 15k SDLT. Shouldn’t affect the seller as they will buy cheaper, but obv tricky for those who are caught up on the wrong side of the fence.
(One could argue prices have gone up more than SDLT as you can’t mortgage SDLT, and most people are restrained on cash rather than mortgage headroom, I would assume this to be true at least here in London)
I bet they won't see it that way, though...............
Sellers notoriously hold the belief that their house never is worth less than the peak it reached.
I agree - as long as the buyer isn’t taking the p*ss I would always be willing to reach an agreement to keep things moving. At the end of the day you’re probably talking fractions of a percent of the overall deal. Life’s too short to get tied up on stuff like this IMO.
You might get lucky and find the owner is willing to just re-engage at £15k lower, but I wouldn’t bank on it!
Some sellers will stick to their guns and say they priced it irrespective of SDLT and the price should remain. Some may accept a reduced offer aslong as it goes all the way up the chain otherwise someone will pay the asking plus the SDLT.
Id be interested to see where prices are in the next 14 months or so.
I'm currently selling a flat in London - even though there's no chain involved and the buyer and myself both instructed our respective solicitors before the new year, we were still told that there's a chance that the sale can't be completed in March... we will see how this goes
With all the searches, having to deal with management companies for LPE1, leasehold stuff...you generally need to factor 12-weeks for a flat sale to reach completion. You could get there quicker just hope that the buyer hasn't just opted to use the cheapest solicitor he can find. No matter how good your solicitor is, you have real problems if the other side is slow. I assume your conveyancer is telling you this because he will have no control over the buyers solicitor other than hassling. A good tip...this is where a decent estate agent is worth their weight in gold. They will be the ones keeping the process on track.
We're buying a chain free freehold house in London at the minute. Mortgage was a dream and the offer was with our solicitor 3 days from application. Our solicitor doesn't have the same enthusiasm as everyone else in the transaction and has needed prodding a few times. I'm being polite but persistent for now.
A friend is buying a house and i was shocked at how much he paid for his solicitor, he said he went with the highest rated firm he found on a comparison website (he does like to spend money) but i must say they have been worth their weight in gold, he says the phone is always answered and he can get through to one of the two partners and emails are responded to the same day or within 24 hours at the latest.
Their work has been immensley thorough. The EA asked my friend to proceed with something before the searches had been completed and when he asked his solicitor they outright declined and said it wasnt in his best interests and their job was to protect him - nice to see a job being done rather than chasing a pay cheque.
Worth every penny. The vendors solicitor, now thats another story - they got a deal with the EA for discounted services if they went for a particular solicitor - we all know how that ends.
Vendor's solicitors have a portal you can log into and see all the stages and the date the stages were completed. Really good.
I think the firm we went with are good (lots of good local reviews) and our fairly local with two offices but our person might be overworked or just not having a good January. We're paying approx £2k plus searches/dispersements, not sure if that's expensive. After the last house move where I picked the worst solicitors possible I told my wife she had free rein to choose who she wanted. I'm only now getting involved as not much seems to be happening.
Posting Permissions
