Your home may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgage.
13th January 2023
As you may have seen in the news, relentlessly, the property market is really difficult at the minute. Interest rates have been steadily increasing for a while but massively increased due to the wonderful mini budget last year. Because rates are high, people appear to be staying put, rather than climbing the property ladder. Especially as the cost of living is increasing in many areas, mortgage payments, gas bills, electricity bills, council tax etc.
What happens if you need to move? What happens if you’ve had a plan in place for a number of years and you were waiting for 2023 to start the ball rolling?
If you hadn’t guessed already, this person is me, Adam.
I moved into my current home at Christmas in 2017. I had sold my first home in East Bristol and moved back to South Bristol where I rented before. I loved living in Bedminster and being close to the bars and restaurants. I was 10 minutes from the city centre where I worked before setting up Lloyd Wells Mortgages and also being walking distance to Ashton Gate where I tend to be every other Saturday.
Once my home is on the market, I’m sure I’ll be sharing it on our social media channels, but for now I’ve put some pictures up from when I bought it. It was a classic doer upper. It needed a new kitchen and bathroom, the windows and doors all needed replacing, the front and back gardens needed a lot of work! I was happy to do this, or more accurately get other people to do this. DIY is not one of my strengths.
We knocked walls down, put walls up, decorated, new carpets and flooring throughout and we made ourselves a lovely home. We welcomed Reggie into our home in 2019 and our beautiful daughter Lily arrived in 2022. The house was beginning to feel a little small. Since Lily’s arrival my office has now turned into a nursery and I’m in the spare bedroom like it was 2020 again!
The good news is that we’d prepared for this all along. My mortgage is with Santander and my fixed rate ends in May 23. Now that we’re past Christmas, it makes it the perfect time to start planning for our move in the Summer.
When selling my first home I had a dreadful experience with an online estate agent who you have to pay upfront. In my experience, once you’ve paid them the money, they have no incentive to sell your home. They were booking in viewings for a fortnight down the line and in that time the viewers had seen other property, fallen in love with them, put offers in and cancelled the viewing on my property! You live and learn.
This time I will be using Max Amey, founder of Maxwell-James & Partners Estate Agents. Max and I have worked together for a few years and I’ve always been impressed by the service that he offers. I truly believe it’s worth paying for a quality agent who will get your property sold, for a good price, quickly.
At the time of writing, Max is coming round next week and I’m desperately going round the house removing scuffs from walls and skirting boards and finally hanging that picture that’s been sat on the floor. We’re also looking at renting some storage space so we can declutter.
From a mortgage point of view, I can’t do my own mortgage, but Pete can. We’ve gone through my options and looked at how much I can borrow. Being self-employed, I’ve had to wait for my Accountant Rhys, to produce my tax calculations. I know how much I can borrow and which lender I would like to go with, NatWest. This is due to how they assess self-employed income and because they have great service and they have more or less market leading rates. We will be producing a mortgage in principle so that I can show estate agents that I am taking the process seriously and I am ready to proceed, should any offer I put in on a new place be accepted.
I also know roughly how much my home is worth and how much is outstanding with Santander. This means I know how much of a deposit I can put down on my new home and what value properties I’ll be looking at. This also helps with other costs such as stamp duty, solicitors fees, survey fees and a removal company.
We’ve written up a list of essentials and nice to haves for our new home. It’s essential that it has 4 bedrooms and that we have a garden for Reg. It would be nice for it to be 15 minutes from family in North Bristol as we’re hoping for some help with childcare. It would be nice for it already to have a home office. It’s essential that it’s not on a main road. It would be nice to be walking distance from a good pub!
As everyone does, we’ve set up a Rightmove search and get instant emails on any new properties that tick the right boxes. A word of warning don’t judge a book by its cover! I refused to view my house when it was on the market as it had a Manchester United vinyl sticker on the kids wall. It wasn’t until the agents removed this picture from Rightmove that I viewed it. When I saw the dreadful sticker on the wall, I realised I had seen it several times online but had seen it as a huge dirty red flag. A second point on this, when selling your home, try not to display any football memorabilia on the walls because it will put certain people off viewing the property at all.
Earlier, I mentioned the bad experience I had with selling my first home. I found two or three properties that I wanted to buy and had offers accepted, subject to selling my home. As it took longer than expected to sell my home these properties were sold to other people. This time round I won’t start viewing properties in person until I have a firm offer on my home.
The last thing I’ll tell you about in this blog is the solicitors. I’ve recommended Jessica Champion to a lot of my clients, and she even helped my Sister move house last year. Her service is second to none. Just like with Max, the estate agent, I do think it’s worth paying for good service. The last thing you want is to not be able to get hold of your solicitor if there are any tricky obstacles along the way!
Next Steps:
If you’re looking to buy and sell in 2023, get in touch and we can help you with everything.
Do give us a call on 01174 520 330. Our initial conversations usually last around 15 minutes.
Alternatively, you can email enquiry@lloydwellsmortgages.co.uk and let us know how we can help you.
We will discuss:
- How much you can borrow
- What that will cost
- What fees can you expect
- How Lloyd Wells Mortgages work
- What insurances you will need
- What documentation you will need to provide
- Next steps
Your home may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgage.
