Property Purchase Part 1

Hello

For my first proper blog post I thought it would make sense to tell you about my house buying experience so far. I'm going to do it in two parts as its a long story. So here goes...

My boyfriend and I were getting fed up with renting for several reasons;

1. Its dead money. Only the landlord is benefiting from it.
2. We weren't allowed pets.
3. We were being inspected every 3 months, which we felt was a big invasion of our privacy.
4. We couldn't decorate the place.
5. Most importantly we could be evicted at any time. We had been in a nice little flat for only six months when the owner decided they wanted to sell so we had to leave. Then my sister was renting somewhere for a few months when the same thing happened to her. It is horrible to have to leave your home when it isn't your choice.

With all this in mind we decided the time had come to start looking for our own home. We had quite a good deposit saved up so we took the plunge. After some thought we decided that a flat would probably be the best option, as at the time we didn't think we would be able to afford a house, and the mortgage payments would be lower so we would have more disposable income. We weren't searching for long when we found a really nice flat. It had two bedrooms, an ensuite, was in a really nice area on the outskirts of a town and it was only 7 years old so very modern inside. After a couple of viewings we put an offer in which was accepted almost immediately (the owner had found a previous buyer, but we were told it fell through because the buyer's circumstances changed). We were encouraged to see the mortgage advisor at the estate agents that were advertising the property. We were happy with this as she was a really nice girl and seemed very knowledgable and efficient. On our first meeting she showed us this glossy book about the house buying process and said she would be there to help us every step of the way. 'Great' we thought!

So she arranges us a good mortgage,  for which we were accepted and put us in contact with their associated conveyancer. Lovely job. Everything was going smoothly. At this point we also paid their 'lifetime broker fee' of £349 which meant for any subsequent house sale or purchase were could use the estate agents services for free. This is when things started to change. On our next meeting with the mortgage advisor we talked about insurances. The standard ones offered are life insurance, critical illness cover and income protection. All of which are designed to protect you if something happens and you can't work/die (and therefore can't pay the mortgage). This is when our mortgage advisor started the hard sell. What a change in character that was!

In between all this we had emailed her with a question. The reply we got was very different to precious exchanges. She was quite blunt and basically said 'This isn't something to be asking me, go to your conveyancer'. Again this was quite a character change. It seemed like once she had our money the service dropped. Aside from all this the flat purchase was going well. We had paid the conveyancer for the searches and the mortgage company for their valuation.

After a few weeks we got 'the stack' containing the contracts, results of the searchers and any other information required about the property. This is where it all fell apart...

As you may be aware most flats are leasehold. Those that are not are very difficult to get a mortgage on. What we didn't realise was that you don't actually own the flat. You own the right to live there for an extended period. With this comes a whole set of other potential problems (I will be doing a separate blog post on this). Subsequently after reading 'the stack' we realised that a leasehold was not what we wanted. After much agonising and at great expense (£1300 in fees) we pulled out of the sale. We were also angry at out mortgage advisor as we felt she should have explained leasehold and freehold to us at the very beginning. Had we know we wouldn't have gone for the flat. As first time buyers we were naive and thought she would advise us, especially as we had explained our frustration with renting. But it seems she was only thinking about her commission.

As a result we lodged a complaint with the company in the hope of getting at least some of our money back. After a month of investigation they sent us a letter stating that our mortgage advisor had done a fantastic job- she had set us up with a mortgage. End of. They wouldn't be giving us our money back. We have since referred our complaint to the Financial Ombudsman and our awaiting their decision. I'll do an update blog with the result of this. Keep your fingers crossed :)