How Do I Find My Ideal Home?
Once you have worked out much you can spend to pay for your new home, you can start looking at property. There are many paths you can take to finding the house of your dreams - the most obvious place to start is at your local estate agents.
State Agents
You should register with as many estate agents as possible within the area in which you want to live. They will send you details of any properties they have on their books which match your criteria. Also, remember, the estate agent is working for the seller of the property who pays his fee, so he won't mind how many properties he shows you. He is also legally obliged to give you a correct description of the property as it is now a criminal offence for estate agents to make false statements about a property or even leave out something important.
You should:
- Register with a number of different estate agents
- Visit a number of properties before making a decision
- Do not be afraid to go back for a second or even third look. Do take notes because it is very easy to not remember things when you have left the property and it is very easy to confuse two properties
- Ignore the decoration and furniture - try to picture the property empty.
Local papers
You should also verify the property pages of the local newspapers or papers such as Loot. These will also include property that is not being sold through an estate agent and may be cheaper because of this.
Housing associations
Housing association property may also be advertised in local papers, or get in touch with your local association (now also known as Registered Social Landlords (RSL)) to see what they currently have on offer.
As well as providing homes for rent some RSLs also help people to buy their own homes.
The Right To Acquire scheme gives qualified tenants of Registered Social Landlords the right to buy their property at a discount. You may also be entitled for the Social HomeBuy scheme, which offers eligible housing association, or council tenants the chance to buy a share of the market value of their current home as well as advantage from a discount of between £9,000 and £16,000 depending on the location. Tenants can buy a minimum 25 per cent of the value of the property and pay a rental charge of not more than 3 per cent of the market value of the residual equity owned by the landlord. The amount of discount you obtain will be in proportion to the share of the property you buy.
The criteria for these schemes continuously change so verify with your local association to see if you are eligible to apply for Shared Ownership.
Buying Brand New
As well as looking at second-hand properties, why not think over moving into a brand new home - you may end up with a very good deal. Developers all over the country are offering incentive schemes to attract buyers to certain sites as they can't sell them or need to money to develop other sites.
Some even offer opportunities for you to move regardless of the fact that you haven't managed to raise a significant cash deposit, or even if you haven't managed to sell your old home yet.
New homes are generally priced a little more than their second-hand equivalents, but for the extra initial outlay, they frequently have many advantages. Most new homes benefit from the NHBC Buildmark warranty, which will mend any faults in the property for the first two years, and then any major faults for the following eight years. So you will not have to worry about the cost of a new roof or any other major structural maintenance for the first 10 years of the building's existence.
Also, thanks to improvements in building standards and insulation, new homes are generally far cheaper to heat than most older homes. So you are likely to make savings on running costs, not to mention the fact that you will probably not need to decorate or make any other surface repairs to your new home.
Many developers are now also offering to build 'off plan' which means that if you agree to buy early, before the house is built, you can choose your plot on the development site and often modify the house to your individual needs. This might mean anything from choosing the colour of the decoration, or choosing from a range of kitchen or bathrooms, right the way through to choosing the position of the interior walls to go with your living necessities.
As well as inviting you with an ever-improving quality of product, many developers are also offering extremely smart incentive schemes to encourage you to buy one of their homes rather than another builder's. These incentives can take numerous forms, but will usually make moving into a brand new home far easier than buying an existing property through providing help with buying and moving costs, or even offering to buy, or help sell, your old home.
Incentives commonly fall into two categories, those that are financially based and those that are product-based. Developers offer most types of incentive on one site or another, at some time, depending on how sales are performing. Financial incentives include offers such as free insurance cover, subsidised mortgages, help with the deposit for first-time buyers and part exchange schemes for succeeding buyers - plus straight discounts off the purchase price. Product incentives basically offer free or discounted products such as curtains, carpets, or white goods for the kitchen, such as fridges and washing machines.
Subsequent buyers can move into many developers' homes even if they are having difficulty selling their old home. Part-exchange schemes are available whereby the developer buys the old home for a fair market price (subject to survey) which is then deducted from the purchase price of the new property (which usually has to be more expensive). The time scales of the move are designed to meet the requirements of the purchaser and, of course, you stand to make financial savings by the lack of any estate agents' fees.
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