Don't make any commitments at this stage, but use the meeting or phone call to gain an idea of how much you can borrow. This now gives you a budget to work with.
Don't be tempted into edging over your budget if you don't find the home you want straight away. You will need to have some money spare for moving fees and refurnishing your new property.
Decide whether you want a fixed, discounted or capped rate. Check whether there are redemption penalties beyond the life of the fixed period, and whether you have to buy the lenders buildings and contents insurance.
Start compliling your bank statements going back 6 months and requesting references from your current and previous employers.
Search for areas that meet your requirements, and research them thouroughly. Consider schools, transport and shops. Use our local area search to help. Once you are happy with the area,and find that perfect house then make an offer.
Find a solicitor. Click here 'Free conveyancing quote' and you can get a no obligation free quotation for how much it will cost for all the legal work involved in purchasing your next home. The fee quoted is all you will pay, and if your happy you can then instruct a solicitor at the click of a button.
Its not always advisible to just accept the homebuyers report your mortgage lender provides - this is often very superficial. To ensure you know everything about the property you are buying, its advisible to instruct your own survey to be carried out.
This is carried out automatically nowadays by most solicitors. Most mortgage companys require this search to be carried out before lending the money. The council can take between a week and a month to send details back to you, so make sure you keep in contact with your solicitor, estate agent and surveyor.
Be prepared to negotiate with the sellers if a lot of work needs doing. Then make a revised offer.
When you finally find a property you like, you immediately start to picture yourself comfortably settled in, the room filled with your own possessions. In many peoples experience, however, it is a long time before you have your feet up by the fire.
According to researchers who tracked the experience of homebuyers last year, the average time from starting house hunting to completing a purchase is 22 weeks.
This breaks down into an average of 10 weeks from having an offer accepted to collecting the keys - with official figures describing a typical timetable for a house sale in England and Wales as:
- From beginning to offer accepted: 12 weeks
- From offer acceptance to mortgage offer: 4 weeks
- From mortgage offer to exchange of contracts: 4 weeks
- From exchange of contracts to completion: 2 weeks
At this point anyone who has ever bought a home will begin to growl angrily at these averages - remembering huge delays over paperwork that went missing between solicitors or sales falling through and the whole process having to begin again. An estimated 28% of accepted offers fail to reach completion, with each of these sales having the potential to drag out for months.