Xela Posted June 24, 2013 Share Posted June 24, 2013 Thoughts on leasehold properties. I got quoted 3.19% for 5 year fixed today and 2.64% for 3 year. Reasonable I thought. I've been quoted 2.44% fixed for 2 years on fixed through Nationwide. 75% LTV Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xela Posted June 24, 2013 Share Posted June 24, 2013 I work in London and the Wife is at Uni in London for the next two years. We don't have much of a choice. We looked at Elstree & Borehamwood at the wknd which is as far out as we are likely to go. Technically not London but only 15mins or so into London. We saw the show room and loved it and it was right next to the station. Sadly the 2 bed flat that was so awkwardly laid out that it put us off. Have a look for yourself..http://www.fairview.co.uk/?xhtml=xhtml/developments/Vantage/properties/thehensonthewarner.html&xsl=property.xsl Bedroom 1 and Bedroom 2 cut into each other meaning they are not quite big enough. The entrance hall is massive though! It's so much a matter of personal taste, but I've never seen a new build I would buy. Space standards are usually inadequate, the layout is often so clumsy that you have little or no choice how to configure the rooms, the quality of finish is often poor, sound insulation is poor, and functionality is sacrificed in order to lever in a couple of features demanded by the marketing department. With that flat, it looks like the usual thing of having to have one bedroom "en-suite", so two bathrooms have been squeezed into a very small flat, with the layout being twisted to fit. Around a quarter of the flat is taken up with bathrooms and hallway - is that how you would choose to allocate what looks like a pretty small overall floor area? The bedrooms are difficult, with the top end of bedroom 1 taken up by door opening space (because of having to fit in the now-obligatory en-suite). How would the layout of bedroom furniture work? What choices do you have about what to go where? It's worth cutting a sheet of paper into shapes which are accurately scaled to represent items of furniture and placing them on the plan, to get a feel for it. The second bedroom is 9ft wide. With 3ft for the door, that means you can get a double bed in, with 1 ft to spare. That will feel pretty cramped. The kitchen area has no window, and the only natural light comes from a window at the far end of the living room. It's likely to feel dark and confined. There's little room for cupboard space, little work surface area - ok if you subsist on takeaways and microwaved ready meals, cramped and difficult if you ever cook anything. The flat as a whole is single aspect, again because they are squashing them in. So light from only one direction, no chance of opening windows on opposite sides to get a through breeze. Some people don't mind that. The balcony is a token effort. As a whole, it looks designed to be able to let the marketers use the key phrases "two bedroom" and "en-suite", while jamming in as many flats as possible, with little thought to the useability of the space in practice. All good comments but properties like this are designed for the young professional who isn't there half the time and just wants a modern, simple and secure apartment. I agree about the en-suite aspect... it certainly is in vogue at the moment but people must like them if they keep making them. As a single bloke, they are ideal. I don't have many possessions so the room is adequate. If I had a family? They wouldn't be and I would be looking for a house. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Risso Posted June 24, 2013 Share Posted June 24, 2013 I agree with Peter when it comes to new builds. Our last house in the UK was a new build and I'd never buy one again.We were seduced by the show room when we bought ours in Bolton, it was only when we moved in that we realised that we didn't have room for a TV in the lounge! That flat above looks just about alright for a young professional but if you're going to buy it, you've got to consider your chances of flogging it when you outgrow it, which you will do in no time. If I was going to buy a flat like that, I'd batter them into submission over the price as they are ten a penny at the moment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterms Posted June 24, 2013 Share Posted June 24, 2013 I agree with Peter when it comes to new builds. Our last house in the UK was a new build and I'd never buy one again.We were seduced by the show room when we bought ours in Bolton, it was only when we moved in that we realised that we didn't have room for a TV in the lounge! That flat above looks just about alright for a young professional but if you're going to buy it, you've got to consider your chances of flogging it when you outgrow it, which you will do in no time. If I was going to buy a flat like that, I'd batter them into submission over the price as they are ten a penny at the moment. I went to look at a couple in Edinburgh, a fairly high-end development. I wasn't going to buy, just interested to see what they had done with the challenge of combining conversion of a former hospital with new-build mixed among it on the same site. Here. In the show flat, they had of course furnished it tastefully, giving all the right signals of the sophisticated taste you would demonstrate by buying it. But the blocks were too close together. Expensive site, yes, but do people really want to pay £4-500k for a two-bed flat with the full-length windows of the next block 30-40 feet away from your full-length windows? Might appeal to wealthy exhibitionists, I suppose. Then I started thinking about how the main room in the show flat could be rearranged, and realised, er, it couldn't. The configuration of furniture they had on display was actually the only way of arranging that particular furniture (not an unusual selection - suite, couple of tables) because the design was so crap and the space standards so inadequate. And that's towards the top end of the market. Lower down, it's the plasterboard walls, hearing low conversations in another room, never mind loud music or vigorous rumpy-pumpy. The odd and unfeasible room shapes. The doors that bash into each other when two are open at once. The complete lack of any storage for a hoover, never mind anything bigger. It's an industry geared towards short-term sales, which doesn't give a flying **** about quality. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterms Posted June 24, 2013 Share Posted June 24, 2013 All good comments but properties like this are designed for the young professional who isn't there half the time and just wants a modern, simple and secure apartment. Yes, I agree. But there's a question about what we want as a country, in terms of our national housing stock. I think the "lifetime homes" approach is a good one. Houses should be flexible, to meet (within limits) the changing needs of a household over time. If we have housing which is so limited and inflexible that you have to move when you have a kid, or become less mobile, that's really not very sensible, and leads to a lot of forced moves, disruption, break-up of communities, expense. The thinking behind the bedroom tax is the exact opposite of lifetime homes. You may occupy a space deemed just sufficient for your basic needs, and no more. If your needs reduce, you must move somewhere smaller, even if it is likely your need for space will soon increase again. Any surplus space is inefficient, wasteful, greedy. Computer says no. If young couples want to live in a small, compact city flat while they work out where they want to be, fine. I'm uncomfortable with an approach to housing which makes them pay poor quality builders far too much for an inferior product which more or less forces them to move, and find someone just like they were two years earlier. And that of course is exactly what the current scheme of underwriting artificially high prices is designed to do. Like most current government polices, it's just about the exact opposite of what we should be doing. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villarule123 Posted June 24, 2013 VT Supporter Share Posted June 24, 2013 They absolutely destroy you as a first time buyer. We're paying 6.9% on a £115k mortgage, even with a 20% deposit. When I look online now I can get around 3-3.5% interest, we didn't think it would go much lower at the time so we got a 5 year fixed mortgage It will cost us £3.5k to exit the fixed mortgage and set up a new one, but we'll still save money over the course of the 2 remaining years. We're looking to move to a bigger house in a couple of years, I can't wait for all this process shit When did you get the mortgage?! I got mine 3 years ago. 15% deposit on a £113k mortgage and I got 5.5% April 2011 We're getting murdered compared to today's rates! You're getting murdered compared to the rate I got 6 months before you got yours! We did apply for one at Barclays at around 5.8% but we got turned down because we were first time buyers. I think it affects your credit rating when you get turned down so we couldn't just apply for everywhere. Ah well, we're able to save towards another big deposit even on the high interest rate, so it's not all that bad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Risso Posted June 24, 2013 Share Posted June 24, 2013 I agree with Peter when it comes to new builds. Our last house in the UK was a new build and I'd never buy one again.We were seduced by the show room when we bought ours in Bolton, it was only when we moved in that we realised that we didn't have room for a TV in the lounge! That flat above looks just about alright for a young professional but if you're going to buy it, you've got to consider your chances of flogging it when you outgrow it, which you will do in no time. If I was going to buy a flat like that, I'd batter them into submission over the price as they are ten a penny at the moment. I went to look at a couple in Edinburgh, a fairly high-end development. I wasn't going to buy, just interested to see what they had done with the challenge of combining conversion of a former hospital with new-build mixed among it on the same site. Here. In the show flat, they had of course furnished it tastefully, giving all the right signals of the sophisticated taste you would demonstrate by buying it. But the blocks were too close together. Expensive site, yes, but do people really want to pay £4-500k for a two-bed flat with the full-length windows of the next block 30-40 feet away from your full-length windows? Might appeal to wealthy exhibitionists, I suppose. Then I started thinking about how the main room in the show flat could be rearranged, and realised, er, it couldn't. The configuration of furniture they had on display was actually the only way of arranging that particular furniture (not an unusual selection - suite, couple of tables) because the design was so crap and the space standards so inadequate. And that's towards the top end of the market. Lower down, it's the plasterboard walls, hearing low conversations in another room, never mind loud music or vigorous rumpy-pumpy. The odd and unfeasible room shapes. The doors that bash into each other when two are open at once. The complete lack of any storage for a hoover, never mind anything bigger. It's an industry geared towards short-term sales, which doesn't give a flying **** about quality. We went to look at a "townhouse" in Castletown a few months ago. I have never seen such an exercise in cramming as many houses into a small space in my life. The garden was overlooked by at least 6 other houses, and you could open the upstairs bedroom window and pass a cup of tea to somebody in the house opposite. I'd have thought we'd have learned a lesson from plague-era London about stuffing people in but apparently not. There is something I suppose that appeals to buying at least one new property in your life, but the small pleasure of having something shiny and new is soon outweighed by the magnolia paint that is one atom thick, pipes that start to leak as soon as the house settles and a back garden that is essentially a builder's dumping yard covered by an inch of top soil. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villa4europe Posted June 24, 2013 Share Posted June 24, 2013 am i pissing in the wind trying to get a mortgage if i change my job in the next few weeks? been waiting all year for the gf to finish college so we could take the plunge and ive decided to change jobs! not career, which most website seem to suggest would mean id be doomed in trying, just job, and its a pay rise, no official probabtion period Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Risso Posted June 24, 2013 Share Posted June 24, 2013 am i pissing in the wind trying to get a mortgage if i change my job in the next few weeks? been waiting all year for the gf to finish college so we could take the plunge and ive decided to change jobs! not career, which most website seem to suggest would mean id be doomed in trying, just job, and its a pay rise, no official probabtion period Just get your mortgage agreed before you move jobs? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villarule123 Posted June 24, 2013 VT Supporter Share Posted June 24, 2013 am i pissing in the wind trying to get a mortgage if i change my job in the next few weeks? been waiting all year for the gf to finish college so we could take the plunge and ive decided to change jobs! not career, which most website seem to suggest would mean id be doomed in trying, just job, and its a pay rise, no official probabtion period Yes, you need to be working for them permanently for at least 3 months I think Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
islingtonclaret Posted June 24, 2013 Share Posted June 24, 2013 I wish I had something to say about buying property. Sadly I can't add to this thread. It's probably one of the conversations at work that upsets me the most... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ender4 Posted June 25, 2013 Share Posted June 25, 2013 (edited) They absolutely destroy you as a first time buyer. We're paying 6.9% on a £115k mortgage, even with a 20% deposit. Holy shoot, i've been paying 1.49% on £200k for the past 5 years Edited June 25, 2013 by ender4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Panto_Villan Posted June 25, 2013 Share Posted June 25, 2013 Villarule - you might want to look into remortgaging then? Sounds like you're paying well over the odds. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Risso Posted June 25, 2013 Share Posted June 25, 2013 Villarule - you might want to look into remortgaging then? Sounds like you're paying well over the odds. I'd say so, that mortgage must be with wonga.com! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anthony Posted June 25, 2013 VT Supporter Share Posted June 25, 2013 am i pissing in the wind trying to get a mortgage if i change my job in the next few weeks? been waiting all year for the gf to finish college so we could take the plunge and ive decided to change jobs! not career, which most website seem to suggest would mean id be doomed in trying, just job, and its a pay rise, no official probabtion period There is no one hard and fast rule. Talk to a financial adviser. There's JulieB on here or my godson's dad Patrick who is a jolly good fellow (and my IFA). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villarule123 Posted June 25, 2013 VT Supporter Share Posted June 25, 2013 We are, but we'll only have 2 years left of this fixed mortgage by the time we can get a remortgage, the wife doesn't start her permanent job until December and I think you have to work at least 3 months in your role to be considered How the feck did you get 1.49% ender? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
omariqy Posted June 25, 2013 Author Share Posted June 25, 2013 I am an IFA but have nothing to do with mortgages. I know generally where is good to buy in London, its just that its so bloody expensive. We have decided agains new builds and we would've only gone for it because of the help to buy scheme or help to sell scheme as some people call it. We saw a lovely flat yesterday in Canons Park near Stanmore. Ground floor flat near the station with massive rooms and massive garden with decking. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ender4 Posted June 25, 2013 Share Posted June 25, 2013 How the feck did you get 1.49% ender? When i initially took out the first mortgage on my first house, i signed up to the base rate +0.99%. Base rate was something like 4%, so i was paying 4.99%. Then i sold that house, ported the small mortgage over to my new house and also took out a second main mortgage with Santander. 2 years later, when it was time to re-mortgage, i rang Santander & they offered to move my whole mortgage onto the ported mortgage at 1.49% (base rate +0.99%). i did have 40% equity in the house by this point, that may have also helped. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xela Posted July 10, 2013 Share Posted July 10, 2013 Quick question - finally had my formal mortgage offer today. Took 3 weeks but got there in the end. One of the conditions attached to the mortgage is that the loan has been granted on the understanding my credit card debt is cleared before, or on completion. Now, I have a reasonably large share portfolio, in which a small amount could be sold to clear the aforementioned debt. My preference would be not to do that as I think the share price still has another 15%-20% to rise in the next 2-3 years. The question is; do they require evidence it has been cleared or will they be happy that I have the means to pay it off at anytime? I'll ask my solicitor tomorrow but just wondered if anyone else had experience of this? I have no problem in paying it off if that is what is strictly required as I'm not looking to mislead anyone but if i did pay it off i'd be looking at buying the shares back as soon as possible via my credit card. It just seems a pointless cycle! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Meath_Villan Posted July 10, 2013 Share Posted July 10, 2013 They will require proof that it has been paid in full ......I had to clear my car payments & minimal cc bill and provide receipts to my broker before I got my first stage payment Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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