The nervous wait to exchange....

[HungryHippos]

If your mortgage is a simple one execution only should be fine, as you say the rate is the rate and you know your circumstances.

The advice from a broker is certainly useful if you have anything complex, or don't want to fill the forms in yourself, or maybe if you've never had one before.

Used Nationwide 3 times now for mortgages and the rates are good, although the broker I was using said they were a little slower than some of their competitors. I suspect you'll be held up more by the searches and other legal work.

If you want to complete quickly then find a decent solicitor, and get them rolling on searches and questions as soon as possible.

 

[Scam]

(snip) If you’ve done the research on the comparison websites, what else are they really offering? Just another place to add delay IMO.

Thanks, this is our thinking too. My girlfriend spoke to them and was quite put off by having to sit on hold for 30mins, then the person was saying how busy they were and it might take a while to get the appointment etc. And then you'd have to get an appointment to take paperwork into a branch etc... yawn. The only complicated part for us is that we're putting in quite different amounts individually as the deposit, and we need to source them from a few savings accounts but I guess that's more down to the solicitors. Probably quite normal too.

If you want to complete quickly then find a decent solicitor, and get them rolling on searches and questions as soon as possible.

Yep, my friend saved my bacon here. He moved recently (well, a year or two ago) so I asked him on the off-chance. He thoroughly recommended his, was recommended to him by a few friends of his, and so he's now used them twice in fact. Funnily enough now we've seen the sales memo they're in the same small town as the sellers ones so maybe that helps? lol (Quite funny considering we're in London and they're not)

Anyway, I'm pleasantly surprised at the comments here on execution only. Anyone else have any thoughts?

 

[HungryHippos]

The bank may ask for source of fund proof for money laundering checks, so make sure you can get access to statements/proof of the money not magically appearing out of thin air. They'll probably want at least 3 months worth of payslips also as proof of earnings.

 

[ChrisD.]

Nationwide were very simple to deal with, the whole application took around 15 minutes. I think they wanted one payslip and that was it. A credit check and proof of income is all lenders should be doing, the anti money laundering checks should be carried out by the conveyancers.

 

[ShiWarrior]

1 year on from when i was asking about Mortgages, well, i thought my Help to buy ISA was fully maxed out in another 2 years, turns out its 1 year (and a bit) away !

Anyone bought a home on a "shared Ownership" scheme ?

they seem to be more expensive to me, paying rent AND paying back mortgage ?
i suppose these "shared ownerships" are useful if you got good income rolling in, but have only a small deposit, and cant wait another few years to build up for deposit value ?

im hoping to put down something like 20 - 30%

 

[ChrisD.]

I looked into them years and years ago and decided to give them a very wide berth. The fees looked to be a rip off. Aren't there any H2B schemes you can use instead?

 

[ShiWarrior]

no idea, not looked into anything yet, i was just curious

 

[ShadowMan]

1 year on from when i was asking about Mortgages, well, i thought my Help to buy ISA was fully maxed out in another 2 years, turns out its 1 year (and a bit) away !

Anyone bought a home on a "shared Ownership" scheme ?

they seem to be more expensive to me, paying rent AND paying back mortgage ?
i suppose these "shared ownerships" are useful if you got good income rolling in, but have only a small deposit, and cant wait another few years to build up for deposit value ?

im hoping to put down something like 20 - 30%

Did shared ownership for 10 years. Was a good way onto market as relatively low income family back in 2009. Single income with new child and low deposit. Overall cost less than renting but we “owned” 30%.

Sold it last year and we got 30% of increased equity. There were fees to pay to get out etc but overall we made a bit on it and were able to get our new place now both working and kids much older.

It suits some people but you have to understand it. The mortgage amount will be low and if the scheme is via a housing association then the rent is usually subsidised as low as they are charities helping people with housing. Think of it as halfway social housing.

if it’s shared ownership with developer or non HA then most likely not as favourable.

Are you looking to put down 30% of whole house as deposit or buy a 30% share of one?

 

[ShiWarrior]

thanks ShadowMan

non-shared , ill be putting perhaps upto 30% deposit on the value of the home, when i was looking through zoopla today, the shared ownership ones, the price shown is less than the value of the house, so it would be 30% on the shared price mortgage

 

[ShadowMan]

If i have it right then it’s similar to what we did.

House was £125k. We bought 30% of it and put down 10% of our share (3% of overall value). After all fees etc. I think our mortgage was just north of £30k. We got a crap rate for being FTB, single purchaser(Mrs not on mortgage) and Shared Ownership. Our initial rate was like 7.5% but as amount was low it didn’t make a huge difference. After 5 years we dropped to variable and it came down to around 4%. We never remortgaged as the fees were more than the saving over many years. When we sold our payment was £147 mortgage and £320 rent including fees and buildings insurance. That was a new build 3 bed semi.

we sold in Feb 2020 for £175k with us receiving 30% of value (£52.5k). Left some equity after clearing outstanding mortgage and let us move on. Other than rent we only had to pay the HA about £1k in fees at the end to leave the contract. It worked for us. The process is sell is the easiest and requires some extra paperwork and solicitors fees.

The main loss is the equity you don’t get when you sell. That goes to HA but in our case we sold to another Shared Ownership buyer so house is still 70% owned by HA and we sold just our share for the £52.5k

 

[ShiWarrior]

been trying to find out how much I will be spending each month (repayments) to see if i can realistically afford my own home on the income I am on, and its not easy

i certainly cant get anything where i am currently , very expensive !
so broadening my radius does bring up properties, mostly block of flats or a park home
a few shared ownership semi detached homes etc

anyway, I found out the average prices for utilities and council tax

add that onto monthly mortgage repayments, now i can see why its hard to get onto the property ladder and homes get reposed

 

[Scam]

Nationwide were very simple to deal with, the whole application took around 15 minutes. I think they wanted one payslip and that was it. A credit check and proof of income is all lenders should be doing, the anti money laundering checks should be carried out by the conveyancers.

Unfortunately we did this at the weekend and epic fail on Nationwide's part it just errored out on the final submit page Obviously couldn't get hold of anyone at the weekend Just got off the phone to them this morning and they had to cancel that application (we paid the fee!), redo our decision in principle and book us in for a meeting on Thurs. I'm hoping that means not too much delay.. at least (fingers crossed) doing it with them it can go straight through etc.

 

[Ahleckz]

So our flat’s closing date is tomorrow.
We’ve had fourteen viewings, and a few verbal offers so it’ll be interesting what it goes for! Only one person who she doesn’t wants to really sell to but everyone else has been grand. It’s been fun doing the viewings and selling the flat and the area to people. Most social interaction I’ve had in a year!

Weirdly, I’ve not had a peep from our solicitor in around ten days. I emailed him to let him know that the closing date had been set but no response. Hope he’s alright..

Rescheduled NatWest appointment on Thursday, they didn’t tell us it takes around three hours so had to rearrange last weeks. Fingers crossed by the end of the week we will have a rough move date!

 

[Scam]

Oh brilliant... Spoke to a recommended solicitor last week to take us on... was waiting on an email with the welcome pack/initial bits and bobs to sign which they said 'beginning of the week'. We reckoned chasing after Wed lunch was fair so I just called... Turns out the numpty admin person emailed all our docs to the wrong email address, missing out my girlfriends middle name to it's gone to someone else with a hotmail address which most definitely will be in use My girlfriend was fuming. It's mostly a rundown of services, terms of engagement etc. but there are pages and a letter with our full names, current address, and new address with purchase price! Rage!

How worried should we be? What can someone do with that info? We really don't want to change solicitors but this is just a ****poor start We knew buying a house would be stressful but not because of stupid mistakes like this...

I laid it on thick without mentioning GDPR etc. but I think my girlfriend will follow up to the other person we initially spoke to (possibly admin person's boss) tomorrow. We just don't want to annoy them so much they're unhelpful and don't get this done before end of June

 

[Peerzy]

Oh brilliant... Spoke to a recommended solicitor last week to take us on... was waiting on an email with the welcome pack/initial bits and bobs to sign which they said 'beginning of the week'. We reckoned chasing after Wed lunch was fair so I just called... Turns out the numpty admin person emailed all our docs to the wrong email address, missing out my girlfriends middle name to it's gone to someone else with a hotmail address which most definitely will be in use My girlfriend was fuming. It's mostly a rundown of services, terms of engagement etc. but there are pages and a letter with our full names, current address, and new address with purchase price! Rage!

How worried should we be? What can someone do with that info? We really don't want to change solicitors but this is just a ****poor start We knew buying a house would be stressful but not because of stupid mistakes like this...

I laid it on thick without mentioning GDPR etc. but I think my girlfriend will follow up to the other person we initially spoke to (possibly admin person's boss) tomorrow. We just don't want to annoy them so much they're unhelpful and don't get this done before end of June

Depending on how much information was in the letters the person at worst could probably commit financial fraud (apply for loans etc....), 99% of people will just have a nosey, lol and delete it though.

You can buy insurance products to product against various things such as financial fraud, document cloning etc.... so maybe suggest the solicitor pays for that if the data is deemed sensitive enough that it could cause issues (example https://www.sentinelgold.co.uk/).

On a side note the solicitor should have reported it as a GDPR breach to their DPO within 48hrs of it happening (regardless of if you want to cause a fuss), maybe on the next phone call ask to speak with the DPO? GDPR rules were put in place for things like this so it should be used as a learning process so it doesn't happen again (password protect files when sending, double check addresses etc....).

 

[Scam]

Depending on how much information was in the letters the person at worst could probably commit financial fraud (apply for loans etc....), 99% of people will just have a nosey, lol and delete it though.

Yeah we're really hoping the latter. It is the first paperwork from them so all it contains is what I said above; full names, current address, new address and purchase price. How worried should we be? Very interesting about the insurance - I didn't know such a thing existed so we shall discuss.

On a side note the solicitor should have reported it as a GDPR breach to their DPO within 48hrs of it happening (regardless of if you want to cause a fuss), maybe on the next phone call ask to speak with the DPO?

Yep very true, although what/who is a DPO?

We think we might follow up with an email (so there's a paper trail of them admitting the mistake), just lay it on a bit, make sure it's escalated and the senior people are aware and maybe ask for a discount rather than sort of reimbursement i.e. some of the "extras" like the wills? Dunno... Like I say, even though they're entirely at fault I don't want to scupper our chances of getting this done before end of June by being overly aggressive!

 

[Peerzy]

Yeah we're really hoping the latter. It is the first paperwork from them so all it contains is what I said above; full names, current address, new address and purchase price. How worried should we be? Very interesting about the insurance - I didn't know such a thing existed so we shall discuss.

Yep very true, although what/who is a DPO?

We think we might follow up with an email (so there's a paper trail of them admitting the mistake), just lay it on a bit, make sure it's escalated and the senior people are aware and maybe ask for a discount rather than sort of reimbursement i.e. some of the "extras" like the wills? Dunno... Like I say, even though they're entirely at fault I don't want to scupper our chances of getting this done before end of June by being overly aggressive!

Realistically it's very unlikely anything will happen. The data wasn't sent to a criminal or something necessarily with the means to do anything with it - think about what your GF would do with the letters and data if she received it for someone else. That being said some sort of insurance is probably fairly cheap and suitable for the situation.

DPO = Data Protection Office. The solicitors will basically have 1 person who is 'in charge' of GDPR for them. They will normally deliver any training, keep a record of any breaches, be the direct contact to the ICO (the body who administers GDPR rules) etc..... The DPO is normally a nominated person with enough responsibility so 1) they need to know about it within 48hrs I believe and 2) will probably be someone high up enough to do something about your concerns.

 

[Jimbeam3678]

DPO = data protection officer. With them being legal professionals they should certainly have one.

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisation...lity-and-governance/data-protection-officers/

 

[b0rn2sk8]

Realistically? Not too worried.

I have an email address which is first.last@popular domain and I get emails for all sorts and stuff which is way more revealing than what they just leaked.

I like most people just ignore/delete it.

Name and agrees isn’t the end of the world, it’s difficult to do anything with that in isolation and is what people used to put in the phone book. The house purchase price is public record and anyone can look it up once the sale completes.

 

[Macky]

It was a mistake, these things can happen from time to time. It wasn't intentional. The risk of anything happening is pretty minimal. So if you want the solicitors to continue to help you, I probably wouldn't raise hell.