Mortgage for about 10K

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RedBike

RedBike

New Member
Location
Beside the road
dan_bo said:
Sod it and buy a really really nice bike Redbike. Who needs warmth and shelter anyway?

I've had to put the money into an account I can't withdraw from. Well not without loosing all my intrest for that month. Just so that I don't spend it on bike bits.

I'm so skint already this month after paying for a new bike I got 2 weeks ago that I can no longer afford to put any petrol in my car, well not if I want to eat. Thankfully, with weather like this I don't care. I'd much rather have the bike than petrol.
 

Crankarm

Guru
Location
Nr Cambridge
Credit cards are foolish way to buy a house unless you have the money upfront which you can stash away in a high yielding interest deposit account. For if you cannot settle the balance on the card in full at the end of the 0% introductory period you will be nobbled by punative interest rates of 29+% plus no end of other punative charges. Circumstances that you cannot currently forsee may transpire.

Dellzeqq is right about your bargaining position with sellers. If you don't ask you don't get. The approach he describes toward a surveyor is a little too vivid, almost brutal. In any case a surveyor may well refuse to act for you if worried about the consequences of doing so. Just ask for details of their insurance should you need to make a claim against them. Any surveyor worth their salt will be insured and keen not to have claims made against them meaning their premiums would rocket but will still provide you with their policy details so you can check it is valid.

Building society surveys are just that - for the benefit of the society or bank not the borrower. They merely look to see that the property is not a pile of decrept falling down bricks nothing more. It is always better to instruct your own surveyor a full structural if their is any doubt about the structure of the building although this would be fairly evident walking around the property - damp, subsidence, cracks or movement.
 

GrahamG

Guru
Location
Bristol
I'm with Dell, offer low ball prices so you don't need a mortgage at all.... in 6-12 months prices will probably have continued down further so you'll get a bite somewhere along the line.
 
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RedBike

RedBike

New Member
Location
Beside the road
Well I went to see a house at lunch today, on sale at offers around £42k. Just within budget without the mortgage. (although I would probably need the mortgage to carry out repairs / make it habitable.)

As I was looking around I asked the agent if they'd had any others. Yes, she said.
-me: How much?
-Agent; We're not allowed to tell you.
-me; Well if I offered 40k would the owners be likely to accept?
-Agent; No, they already had offers for far more.
-me; If I offered them the asking price would I be in for a shot (42k)
-Agent; No, they've been offered 57k.
-me; What *!*!, It's only listed at 42k
-Agent; Well houses are in demand here.

I stopped looking around at that point.
 

Night Train

Maker of Things
If you can afford £42k cash then offer it and sod the mortgage.
If you are a cash buyer then you don't need to worry about satisfying anyone else wtih regard to the survey, just yourself. However, given that you would only lumber a lender with a very small risk their survey will be rubbish, essentially a case of is the £42k house worth more then £10k? Well of course it is so they wouldn't even care if it was falling down, the land and demolition site would still be worth more then £10k.

Go to your bank and ask them what is the most they will lend you unsecured. Add that amount to your deposit and deduct the cost of fees and structural survey and then make that your best cash offer, not your first offer, just your best offer.
 
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RedBike

RedBike

New Member
Location
Beside the road
Having now phoned up about 5/6 different properites all with different agents I think I was being very naive about prices. I thought a house with an asking price of 55k-60k could realistically be purchased for just over £50k. I was soooo wrong.

If anything it appears as though you have got to offer in excess of the asking price.
It looks like i've got to go away and re-think the whole situation.
 

adds21

Rider of bikes
Location
North Somerset
RedBike said:
Having now phoned up about 5/6 different properites all with different agents I think I was being very naive about prices. I thought a house with an asking price of 55k-60k could realistically be purchased for just over £50k. I was soooo wrong.

Humm... Not my experience of recently buying a house. Usually, when the market is depressed (like now), you'll be able to put in a lower offer. I purchased a house in December for 10k below asking. Obviously it vastly depends on the area and price range.

Who is telling you the offer won't be accepted? Remember that it's usually in the agents interest to sell a property at the highest price. It also isn't their place to refuse an offer. If you make an offer the agent must pass that offer to the vendor. I wouldn't necessary take much notice of an agent saying "well, they turned down an offer of £xx". You don't know the circumstances of the offer. For example if the vendor wants to sell quickly, then he may well be tempted on a lower offer for a quicker sale. I was.

FYI, there are some good mortgage and loan calculators at www.whatsthecost.com
 
Credit cards are foolish way to buy a house unless you have the money upfront which you can stash away in a high yielding interest deposit account. For if you cannot settle the balance on the card in full at the end of the 0% introductory period you will be nobbled by punative interest rates of 29+% plus no end of other punative charges. Circumstances that you cannot currently forsee may transpire
That maybe true if you only have one card but I said he should only do it if he has several.

Once you have a balance on a credit card you can transfer the remaining balance to ANY credit card.

It's unlikely he will get landed with 20% interest. As long as he doesn't lose his job or become ill during this but if he does, he will always have other cards to fall back on.

Many credit cards have offers like, "5% interest for the life of the balance". If he can't get another 0% deal when the original one expires then he just transfers the balance to one of these cards and pays the 5% interest.

Either way, the costs of a mortgage dwarf the costs of borrowing this way. It's easy for people to see the word credit card and run a mile but in some ways it's safer as the debt is not secured to your house.

Martin Lewis has written a guide on stoozing here
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/cards/stooze-cash-credit-cards
 
Having now phoned up about 5/6 different properites all with different agents I think I was being very naive about prices. I thought a house with an asking price of 55k-60k could realistically be purchased for just over £50k. I was soooo wrong.
Offer 45k/48k and if you don't get it keep looking.

Riverman, that was what people did 5 or 10 years ago. It's not as easy to do thesedays.
It's harder yes but as long as he can get hold of a super balance transfer card (there's about 12 left, see previous link) he can do it.

Once he's transferred the credit card money into his bank account, he'll be left with a credit card balance at 0% for 12 months.

Credit card companies regularly offer promotional balances, thus for to avoid the possibility of 20% interest he'd need to ensure he has several other cards that offer these balances.

Edit to add: Seeing as you have 42k already, why not just offer 42k? And if they don't accept that, offer a little more, say 45k and simply borrow the extra 3k as above.
 
Well I went to see a house at lunch today, on sale at offers around £42k. Just within budget without the mortgage. (although I would probably need the mortgage to carry out repairs / make it habitable.)

As I was looking around I asked the agent if they'd had any others. Yes, she said.
-me: How much?
-Agent; We're not allowed to tell you.
-me; Well if I offered 40k would the owners be likely to accept?
-Agent; No, they already had offers for far more.
-me; If I offered them the asking price would I be in for a shot (42k)
-Agent; No, they've been offered 57k.
-me; What *!*!, It's only listed at 42k
-Agent; Well houses are in demand here

I stopped looking around at that point.

lol some estate agents are the scum of the earth! chancers!
 
Location
Llandudno
The estate agents do sound a bunch of chancers tbh.

The house is worth 3 times the salary of the average person who could reasonably be expected to live there. What you pay for it is another matter.

Where is this anyway?
 
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RedBike

RedBike

New Member
Location
Beside the road
Edit to add: Seeing as you have 42k already, why not just offer 42k? And if they don't accept that, offer a little more, say 45k and simply borrow the extra 3k as above
Not quite got that much. 40k would completely clean me out. I'd have to sell my pay for the solictors / valuations on credit cards and max my overdraft to get that. I was sort of expecting a 42k house to go for 38lk. Obviously not!

Offer 45k/48k and if you don't get it keep looking
No fear, it's that cheap because it's not far off being a ruin. Well slight exageration but there will be some MAJOR repairs.

Where is this anyway?
I'm looking here
http://www.nestoria.co.uk/leek/house/sale/sortby-price_lowhigh
 
There are a couple of big sites to look for homes

www.rightmove.co.uk is the biggest and there's another big one but I can't remember its name.

http://homes.trovit.co.uk/ is quite a big search engine for just about everything.

Also have a look at http://www.fish4.co.uk/iad/homes

Maybe pop over to these forums and ask some questions
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=175653

To be honest I'm not a fan of moneysavingexpert, find him really annoying abit of a show off and quite bigheaded to call himself the UK's Money Saving Expert when he's using the advice of unknown people on his forums, but there is a lot of good advice on those forums.
 
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