Andy Coates Blog

Finally, 6month later I have finally managed to write part 3 of this series about mine and my girlfriends house buying journey. To catch up with the story so far check out these previous 2 posts.

A rough guide to buying a house Part 1
A rough guide to buying a house Part2

At the end of my last house buying post we had pulled out of the first house we looked at because the survey brought up a few things we were a bit wary about and we had very poor communication from the Estate agents, "Pattinsons you have been named and shamed!". So to bring you up to date I will start off from where I left off.
On the new house we were looking at we had the survey done which came back satisfactory, and most importantly we had our mortgage approved. The only thing we were waiting of new was the land searches on the property and information on the property itself which was being handled by our fantastic solicitor. There was an issue about new windows been fitted in the past 3 years without basic planning permission which was needed for this type of property. Our solicitor managed to resolve this so we didn't have to potentially restore the windows to their original sometime in the future. A second issue was to do with a footpath which runs out the back of the property, half of the path would be owned by us and in the legalities it said that we grant access on this path to the surrounding neighbors but it didn't say that we had access to our property on the bits of he path which want owned by us. Bu default we would have access along as everyone's deeds were the same, but being blessed with finding a good solicitor she checked this out so we would have any potential problems in the future.

Finally after about 9 weeks from verbally agreeing to purchase the property we went and signed the formal contract which committed us to buying the property and were given an exact date when we would be paying funds and taking the mortgage from. After another 2 to 3 weeks of waiting for paperwork to be complete the day came when we could collect our keys and the house was ours! I think it was the 5th of July when we got the actual keys and completed, it all seems so long ago.

The first time we came in the house when we actually owned it was a strange feeling, quite exciting and overwhelming, this was our first real chance to start making the house ours. The first thing we wanted to do was rip out the old horrible bathroom and install a new one, after giving everything a good clean and hover I began checking out the plumbing and electrics figuring out where everything went to and how i all worked and labeling which cables were not being used anymore. The first horror I (eventually) found was that the stopcock for the water supply into the house was buried inside a massive blob of expanding foam. This was located at the back of a cupboard int he kitchen where I expect the previous tenants had filled the hole with expanding foam to stop draught's but had also covered the stopcock. After picking away at the expanding foam i eventually managed to get at the stopcock and turn off the water which was handy as I was wanting to make a start on taking out the old bathroom. Besides the plumbing there was other quirks about the house such as the electrics, the house still has an old consume unit but it is still safe and up to legislation but there was also allot of excess wiring in the house from the old heating system which was located in the attic but now we have a combi-boiler so all of that cabling leading to the attic was obsolete, so i proceeded to test if these cables were disconnected and removed them to tidy everything up a bit more.

Over the following months we worked hard tidying the house, painting walls and ceilings which seemed to take forever but the hardest thing of all was fitting a new bathroom. Once we had taken the old one out the room looked like a compete bomb site, everything looked horrible, dirty, old and dusty but after a good few weeks of tiling walls with lots of help from friends and family things started to come together (tiling took MUCH MUCH longer than i expected and don't even get me started on grouting!). Eventually on the 27th of August we moved in to our new house, ironically the following day i had to go away and work down Leeds so it wasn't until the end of September when i got to spend some real time in our new house.

So from our experience here is a rough checklist on what to do when buying a home.

1. Do allot of research into the area you are looking at speak to people around the areas, the best piece of advice i was given was to choose an area first and the house second as a good area makes a good home.
2. Shop around the mortgage brokers and see how much the banks will lend you, check my post on mortgages for more information
3. Register with all of the estate agents in the area and let them know exactly what your looking for, its in their best interest of find you something your looking for.
4. Look at lots of properties even if you think they look just "OK" on paper you may be pleasantly surprised, you will also get a feel for the market.
5. When viewing property's ask lots of question and tell the vendor hat you will be getting a fully comprehensive survey if you make an offer and they will be more inlined to tell you a bout the "quirks" of he property.
6. When making an offer on a property be cheeky, go 10% under the asking price and wait don't just jump in all estate agent overvalue most properties anyway.
7. Get a decent survey so you know exactly what your buying, any negative points on the survey will enable you to negotiate the price if needed.
8. There is no reason why you cant talk to the vendors directly as they what to sell their house just as much as you want to buy it, estate agents incentives are to get the best price for their commission.
9. Find a good solicitor, its probably best to go from friends and family's recommendations as some estate agents will only recommend companies which they receive commission from referring customers.
10. Expect everything to take longer than expected and keep chasing up your solicitors and estate agent.
11. Check out every detail and keep a house diary of all of the developments (I ended up with lots of scraps of paper with dates and numbers on!)
12. Finally, expect to spend ore money than you anticipated, no-matter how good you have planned things something always creeps up!

I hope this proved useful or just entertaining, if you have any stories or tips you think i should add just drop me an email. Currently Me and my girlfriend have been in our house now for 6 months which has flown over, the next big project is to rip out the kitchen and fit a new one although i think that will be o the back burner for a while.