After 17 years, we bought a new house!

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We had always talked about moving house but never really got any further than looking on Rightmove to see what was out there. Our house was our home. It’s where both Shilts and I kind of grew up (in a mature-after-uni sense), it’s where both our children came home after being born and it was our family home. But after 17 long years, it was time to move on. As we found out, there was a lot to do in the house buying and selling process and I couldn’t find anywhere (aside from biased mortgage or solicitors websites) that explained the process. So here’s how we sold our property and bought a new one with a mortgage. 

Find out the current market value for your property 

As we had bought our home back in 2004, the price we had paid for it and the price it was currently valued at (in 2022) had changed quite a bit. We didn’t know if the renovations we had made over the years had added value or not, and if there was any interest in our home from potential purchasers. 

We asked three estate agents for their valuation for our home and they surprised us. The valuations were all different with a £20k difference between them. The valuations also gave us an opportunity to find out more about the estate agents and how they intended to sell our home. I did not like one particular estate agent, he wasn’t professional and his valuation paperwork confirmed that. Always check the detail in the valuation paperwork, for example, this particular estate agent’s paperwork stated that their fees were £2,000 plus VAT = £3,000. Incorrect! 

Check how much you currently owe on your mortgage 

Once we had the valuation for our property, we checked with our mortgage provider to see how much our outstanding balance was. This gave us an idea of how much we would need to pay back to the mortgage provider on completion of the sale and how much profit we would make (based on the price the estate agents had valued our house on). 

Organise your finances

After finding out what you owe on your existing mortgage, it may be useful at this stage to see what insurances you have in place. Will your current life insurance suffice or will you need to research other providers? It is always wise to do your research and search term life insurance quotes for your future home and family. Knowing what products are out there will help the process of ensuring you have suitable cover should anything happen. 

Find out what you could borrow 

Once we had the valuation for our house, our next step was to find out how much we could realistically borrow for a new property. I was worried about this as being self-employed I had heard many horror stories about lenders not wanting to help. We contacted an independent mortgage broker who was brilliant. She asked us to complete a questionnaire about our income, our debt and our requirements for a new mortgage. Armed with all our information, she searched potential lenders and we were given a decision in principle. This decision in principle gave us an upper limit of what we could afford and gave us an idea of properties we could look at. 

Put your house up for sale 

Before we could go and look at potential properties, many estate agents told us we had to be in a position to buy. Therefore, our house needed to have sold subject to contract and we needed to have a decision in principle, or we had to have the total cash in the bank (with financial statements to prove it). 

We sold our house in 3 days. I put a lot of that down to how our house was presented. It was clean, clutter-free and looked good in photographs. If you spend some time presenting your home to potential buyers, I think you’ll definitely reap the rewards. 

Watch out for Estate Agent photo trickery 

Looking at houses online and in-person are very different. Lots of estate agents use little tricks to make houses appear larger than they really are. They use wide lens cameras, favourable angles and computer trickery. Do you ever see a photograph of a house for sale with a grey sky in the background? Our house was photographed on a grey day but a sunny blue sky was edited in to the photograph that buyers saw. Always view a property in person to get the feel for the property and to see if it’s as big as the brochures make out. 

Check the prices for similar properties in your desired area 

When we were looking to see what property was on the market, there was a distinct shift in properties available in different price bands. We knew we wanted to look for a house that had at least three bedrooms, a drive for our two cars, a garage was a bonus and we wanted a utility room if possible. We knew what we wanted and had a good look around our desired area to see if we could see any properties that included them all. 

Viewings only if in a position to buy 

As I mentioned earlier in the blog post, we could only view properties when we were in a position to buy. As the housing market was so fast-paced, we needed to be in prime position with everything ready to commit to buy. We had sold our home, subject to contract, we had our decision in principle ready and I had spoken to a solicitor to find out how they worked and how to go about instructing them to help with the sale and purchase of a new home. 

If you’re across the States, check out The 5 Best Suburbs of San Jose, CA to check out the best places for real estate, family homes and apartments to live and thrive in. 

Ask for recommendations for solicitors 

We have had an awful experience with our solicitors so my best advice would be to ask family and friends for recommendations on who you can trust to work in your favour. Our solicitors were local which meant we could visit the offices to sign paperwork within an half an hours notice, and this also helped when we could collect paperwork rather than it being sent to us in the post, second class, which took over 5 days to get to us. 

Congratulations, you’ve found a new home. Now what? 

When you’ve found your dream property, are serious about buying it and want to take it off the market, speak to the estate agents who are selling it. We spoke to the vendors estate agents who said they had viewings booked in for the weekend, in 2 days time. We knew that if we were serious about our new home, we had to snap it up. We were confident that we couldn’t get another house that ticked off all our wishlist for the price it was being marketed at (do you research!) so we made an offer of the asking price, and asked the vendor if she agreed to the asking price would she take the house off the market and cancel the remaining viewings. Thankfully, she agreed and the house was sold to us, subject to contract. 

Instruct your solicitors to proceed 

When you’re happy with your solicitors, you can instruct them to proceed with your sale and/or purchase. We gave all our personal details to the solicitors, including details of the house we were selling along with the house we wanted to buy. We hand-delivered ID documents for verification purposes and were told to expect further paperwork in the post. 

We were sent lots of paperwork to complete for both the sale and purchase of the properties. We had to pay some money upfront for admin (photocopies) and purchase of legal documents and left it in the hands of the solicitors. 

Confirm your mortgage

Once you’ve found a property to purchase, you’ll need to confirm your mortgage. Our mortgage advisor was brilliant and did a lot of the work for us. We were then asked for more paperwork to confirm our income and finances. At this point, we asked our solicitor to proceed with searches etc whilst we were waiting for our confirmed mortgage offer. Our new home was surveyed to make sure it was worth the asking price as was our current home. 

Keep in contact with your solicitors and estate agents 

One of the most frustrating things is expecting people you’ve instructed to work on your case and then finding out they haven’t done what they said they would. Keep in regular contact with your solicitors and estate agents. We made weekly calls to our solicitors for progress updates and we passed that information around our chain. Ask your solicitors for regular progress updates as from our experience, this helps move things along.  

Unfortunately for us, things didn’t go as smoothly as we had hoped they would and had to escalate a few concerns but thankfully six months later, we are in our new, forever home and really happy.