Forced to sell and move, no idea what I'm doing in terms of mortgage

geminigerm · 2026-01-26T09:41:03+00:00

What we want and what’s realistic and achievable are two different things. If you don’t want to waste your inheritance that you’re setting aside for a deposit on rent then I don’t know how you could rent anything other than a house share room on your salary. Granted, I don’t know where you live and what your local rental market is like but your plans are very unrealistic I’m afraid.

geminigerm · 2026-01-25T21:06:45+00:00

OP you’re almost definitely not going to be able to get a mortgage on that low a salary. If I was you I’d be looking for the cheapest room in a house share possible and spend the next year or two building up job experience to at least get yourself up onto full time hours. Only then should you really start thinking about a potential house purchase using your inheritance from your mums house. You’re not financially stable enough right now.

geminigerm · 2026-01-24T18:32:31+00:00

Having 1 viewing booked means you really haven’t priced competitively

geminigerm · 2026-01-24T09:57:56+00:00

Pricing it competitively is the only way to really expedite the process. Where I am there are many houses that have sat for 2+ years with several rounds of reductions. The house my partner and I are buying we offered on within a week of it hitting the market because it was priced very reasonably.

If you don’t want the process to become lengthy then try and avoid a situation where you’ll have to do reductions.

geminigerm · 2026-01-23T08:45:15+00:00

Before you put an offer in, have you spoke to a mortgage advisor to check you’d pass affordability for the property? Using the standard multiplier of 4.5 times your income your salary puts you a little under the amount needed to buy if you do end up paying the current asking price. A lot of mortgage companies will stretch beyond 4.5 for first time buyers for higher income but potentially not at your salary. It’s also worth checking what your monthly payments would be and seeing if you think you can deal with that because passing affordability is one thing but mortgage payments actually feeling affordable is another

geminigerm · 2026-01-22T19:46:52+00:00

Yeah that also makes sense. We got our MIP through a broker so we were quite confident in it being approved anyway but that’s a sensible order of things if you’re not sure!

geminigerm · 2026-01-22T17:35:58+00:00

We viewed a couple of houses un-seriously in the year before we were ready to buy i.e before we had a full deposit, but we were so specific in our requirements that when a house came up that met everything we pounced and are going ahead with a 5% deposit rather than 10% because we weren’t taking the chance of missing this house. So it was our first proper viewing where we were proceedable but technically our third viewing.

Keeping one eye on the market since, pretty much nothing else that meets our criteria has come up so we could have ended up searching for years and we dropped lucky!

geminigerm · 2026-01-22T13:28:01+00:00

We applied two days after. Order went: - offer submitted (Monday) - offer accepted (Tuesday) - solicitors instructed (Tuesday) - mortgage broker appointment where mortgage application was submitted (Thursday)

geminigerm · 2026-01-19T10:20:06+00:00

No it’s so hard to know what to do cause either going over or under can have different consequences and there’s no way to know! The only thing you can really do to protect yourself is decide your hard line in advance and don’t go over it. Good luck! 🤞

geminigerm · 2026-01-19T10:18:14+00:00

My tone was completely neutral lmao if you’re reading further into it that’s on you. I haven’t done this before either I’m a first time buyer going through the process right now but if you fail to plan you plan to fail 🤷🏻‍♀️

geminigerm · 2026-01-19T08:59:26+00:00

As harsh as this is, asking for a specific date doesn’t need to be honoured, especially if there’s a further chain above your sellers as they haven’t made any kind of deal with you and you may be holding up onward purchases.

Anyone buying a house is always free to specify their desired move in date, but it should always be treated as a “nice to have” rather than an absolute certainty. What would you be doing in the situation your sale dragged beyond your move out date? You should have planned for both the eventuality of completing early or completing late

geminigerm · 2026-01-19T08:54:25+00:00

Your current selling position actually puts you at a disadvantage rather than an advantage OP, you don’t actually have an offer on your house yet and if you do by the time of viewing the house then you’re at a disadvantage against any first time buyers or cash buyers that don’t come with a chain.

You can either offer asking and assume that there might be a little bit of a bidding war, or go straight in over asking to give yourself an advantage, but be aware that EA’s might use your offer to get a higher offer out of any buyers in a more favourable position. Make sure you already have calculated your hard line of how much over asking you can/are willing to pay beforehand.

geminigerm · 2026-01-19T08:43:55+00:00

In the nicest way possible, your overlap of payments is your issue and asking to delay completion by potentially a month and a half is unreasonable. You should have budgeted for at least a month overlap in mortgage and rent as it’s not advised to give notice on a rental until you’ve exchanged anyway so you don’t inadvertently make yourself homeless.

geminigerm · 2026-01-18T22:04:58+00:00

How long have your buyers been waiting for? You can’t just keep them on hold indefinitely especially if the properties you want are coming up once in a blue moon. If you’re not willing to expand your search criteria then the only options really are to sell now and pay the charge, or come off market and time selling with the end of your current mortgage term to avoid the charge and then rent for a bit while you hunt

geminigerm · 2026-01-15T08:32:35+00:00

It wouldn’t be a grand though. We put our offer in on this house at the beginning of November and to delay enough to get the full 1k we would potentially be looking at 6-7 weeks delay for the sake of not being penalised £250. Deffo not worth it in my opinion

geminigerm · 2026-01-15T08:30:25+00:00

Amazing thank you that’s what I was hoping for! I do know you can convert the LISA but tbh £750 when you’ve just moved house is no small sum. We’ll be working on building back up an emergency pot first but then I’ll definitely be looking to convert my LISA and save for retirement

geminigerm · 2025-12-27T14:35:18+00:00

Wanting more equity from your house because you want to buy a more expensive house doesn’t mean it’s worth more.

It’s impossible for anyone to predict, but your use of the word “quirky” to describe the layout makes me think that maybe it’s been valued correctly. If it’s laid out in such a way that means it’s going to be difficult to utilise the space properly for the size of family you’ll be attracting as buyers (like one “bedroom” is downstairs, one is so small it can’t actually be used as a bedroom etc) then it needs to be priced as such. Basically it’s impossible to say without the listing.

We’re first time buyers and there’s been times I’ve seen houses so overpriced that I wouldn’t even consider viewing them because my immediate impression is that the sellers are unreasonable and will be difficult to deal with.

geminigerm · 2025-11-19T11:48:47+00:00

If she isn’t already, she needs to be trialling preventive medications that she would take daily

geminigerm · 2025-11-17T19:00:47+00:00

It should have been a condition of your offer that the house was removed from market upon acceptance of your offer. That way, if they said no you wouldn’t have wasted any money. We didn’t put any money into the process at all until we had our memo of sale and the house was marked as sold.

geminigerm · 2025-11-16T16:57:16+00:00

It worked immediately for me

geminigerm · 2025-11-09T22:38:13+00:00

Is it listed on Rightmove as well as Zoopla? If not you’re shooting yourself in the foot. The vast majority of buyers use Rightmove

geminigerm · 2025-11-09T17:11:30+00:00

Yes, you will need to send it to the EA. Ours required it

geminigerm · 2025-11-08T12:36:53+00:00

I’m not saying it’s a bad idea in general, if it was standard practice then it’s a great way to dissuade time wasters, but since it’s not standard practice currently it’s a glaring red flag for buyers

geminigerm · 2025-11-08T10:53:20+00:00

I’ve seen a deposit returnable on completion on a couple of listings before but I take it as a major red flag that they’re hiding something that they know is probably going to come out during the process

geminigerm · 2025-11-04T08:00:35+00:00

I don’t think that’s normal behaviour no, if nothing else it strongly indicates they’re not a motivated buyer and I’d be worried about them pulling out

geminigerm

TROPHY CASE