Buying Process

Hi,
Could someone give a very basic outline of the main steps involved in moving house.
I know that sounds very general but for instance do you settle on a house you wish to buy first before putting your own house on the market?
Do you try and get the mortgage arranged as early as possible or wait until you are definite about the house you wish to buy?

Is it advisable to talk to a mortgage broker rather than the lenders directly?
How can you tell if they deal with all lenders or just some?
Is it more straight forward to approach your current lender at first?

I know it obviously varies and depends on lots of different factors but from peoples experience what is the time frame between seeing a house you're interested in and moving into it?

Lots of questions, I know and some very basic but all help appreciated

You would need to get your own house on the market first. I found that a lot of estate agents will not allow you to put in an offer until the other house has gone sale agreed. Some agents refused to take an offer even after sale agreed and insisted that the the contract should be signed on the house you are selling.

Most financial books advise speaking to a broker as the means to getting the highest amount and my experience would agree with that.

This is the first time I've been involved in all this so thats as much as I can tell you.

You need to think the process through logically.

So - you want to move house. You want to buy a new house. you need money to buy a new house. Where is that money coming from? Is it money you have freely available or do you need to borrow some or all of it? Is some of it coming from the sale of your own house? If yes, then how are you going to pay for your new house if you don't have the money from your old house?

So first look around and see what is available. Where do you want to live? Can you afford to live there? How much will you get for your own house? How much do you need to borrow? Talk to your own bank or current mortgage provider in general terms about how much they might be willing to lend to you - you don't have to go with them in the future. You don't have to have a specific hosue in mind at this stage.

The purchase process time scale is very dependent on your financial position. If you have enough money to buy a house and don't need to borrow or sell your own, you can move in in less than a week - in theory - in reality - 6-8 weeks is the norm.

If however you need to sell your own house before you can buy a new one, it will take as long as it takes to sell your own. I have clients with houses on the market for in excess of 18 months - they cannot buy anything until their own sells.

mf

Once we decided that we wanted to move house and the area we wanted to move to, this is the way I did things:

Put our house on the market, as we needed the funds from the sale of our house to purchase our new house and also alot of estate agents will not deal with you when you are looking at houses if you have not got your house sale agreed, never mind not even on the market.

Got in touch with mortgage mortgage broker in order to determine how much of a mortgage we could get, so then we knew exactly what budget we had when looking at houses. Got mortgage approval. You may as well get your mortgage approved as soon as possible but if you dont buy house after 6 months of loan approval then you will just have to submit recent bank statements and wage slips to renew the mortgage again.

I went with a mortgage broker as you just give in all the relevant paperwork to them and they sort everthing out. You can ask them for a list of the banks that they deal with.

Hope that is of some help.