Some decent knowledge on here so thought we needed a dedicated thread.

Need to value a property with a view to buying it off-market.

Do I get an average of 3 valuations from estate agents or pay a couple of hundred for a RICS surveyor valuation?

surely you should get both? a couple of hundred quid could save your 10s of thousands surely?

Hit me up with address and post code. I have access to right move plus, gives access to lots of data. On holiday so might not get straight back to you.

I know no one has a crystal ball, but anyone that has experience of is actively following the market have any educated guesses/thoughts on whether to wait post-Brexit for first-time buy? Or just yolo it now pre-brexit. Looking at cheap residential to get on ladder rather than investment/BTL, but potentially look to move within 2 years and potentially let out property rather than sell.

There are too many unknowns about Brexit currently to accurately predict its impact on the property market. My advice would be to buy now but rather than buy something cheap to get on the ladder I would suggest trying to future-proof yourself slightly by looking for something that could suit you for 4 or 5 years (if that's feasible). That should (might) take you beyond any initial Brexit fallout. Keep in mind that the bigger the deposit you can scrape together the more you insulate yourself from potential negative equity.

Very generally speaking if you buy now and are looking to move / sell post-Brexit then everyone will be in a similar boat. If the property market implodes people will still want to move and while property values might go down the values of property you'd be interested in will also go down.

interest only kicks in after 5 years - at 1.75% of the total of the equity, the rate increases after that at RPI + 1% until the loan is paid off. it is sort of assumed that within 5 years you will be able to remortgage with a higher salary/saved money to cover the equity (https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/mortgages/help-to-buy-equity-loans/). either way it is a fucking cheap loan

the cut off is £600k for a house in london (within m25 iirc) and £450k outside of london. £300k in wales

the deposit you have saved doesn't alter the equity loan amount, me and my gf are using a 20% cash deposit. the loan amount is 20% of the value of a new home (40% in london!)

it is a really good scheme if you have at least a 5% deposit and an alright wage, but you can see how it artificially inflates property prices - as suddenly more people can afford a £600k flat in london, whereas before they could only stretch to £340k..

note you cannot use a mortgage leveraged above 4.5x your salary. this fucked us originally as we had a monster 4.8 leverage (if anyone needs a mortgage advisor I can share details)

You only actually pay interest on the amount though not capital as well. The only way to repay the HTB equity loan is in 10% chunks. You must repay it after 25 years or when you sell the property.

you can with an ISA after some time, as the government are aware that "circumstances can change" https://blog.moneysavingexpert.com/2016/04/can-you-rent-out-a-home-bought-with-a-help-to-buy-isalifetime-isa/

but yeah you aren't allowed to with a help-to-buy property.. apparently

you might need to remortgage though?

We thought the same as we sold our old place, put everything in storage, had large lump of equity and mortgage ready to go. Even moved in with parents so we could continue to save and have no ties around a rental property.

When we complete later this month, it will have taken 11 months and 3 weeks after selling our old place. We got let down on 3 properties regardless of offering full asking price on all 3, one seller decided after several months of us waiting she simply didn't want to sell after all.

It's cost us £15k+ in not being able to port our mortgage within the window (which I spent ages negotiating an extension from 3 to 6 months), surveys, searches, solicitor fees and storage before we've even started buying our new place. Add into that the hundreds of hours I've spent on the phone to solicitors, estate agents and mortgage providers as well as the time spent viewing properties (we viewed over 80 properties in 8 months before it all started progressing with house no.4).

While you may think you're 'perfect buyers in the perfect position', you're entirely at the mercy of others and I really cannot underestimate what utter time-wasting cunts there are out who think nothing of fucking you over at the drop of a hat knowing there is zero comeback on them.

With that said, good luck to anyone going through a house sale / purchase at the moment

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/property-prices/london/

spicy