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House purchase & home mover mortgages

If you are considering moving home, then it’s an important time to get good whole-of-market mortgage advice.

There are lots of things to consider in terms of how to arrange the mortgage and their potential cost implications.

If your existing loan still has early-repayment penalties, you will need to consider the option of “porting” it to the new property (see below).

This also applies if your current mortgage has very competitive terms like some of the tracker mortgages that existed before the credit crunch.

You’ll also benefit from getting advice on the best way to stage the process to limit as much risk of possible from the collapse of any chain.

We can also help with more complex enquiries like new build properties, breaking a chain by completing a purchase before your sale completes, properties needing renovation and other complex scenarios.

It’s also important that you know for sure your situation is plausible before investing considerable time and money in marketing your property or legal work.

Many lenders and tech sites might issue a “decision in principle” based on a rudimentary questionnaire that is not in-depth enough to correctly assess your eligibility, which can lead to costly exercises only to be declined several weeks after applying for a mortgage.

We will help you avoid the risk of being led down the garden path by being issued a decision in principle that isn’t viable.

Our advice service for house purchase

  • FCA regulated, covered by the financial services compensation scheme
  • Advice fee of just £299 paid when the mortgage is approved in full
  • No upfront advice fees
  • Whole-of-market independent mortgage advice
  • Deal with a single point of contact
  • Only deal with a qualified mortgage advisor
  • We can work entirely over the phone and online
  • Calls outside office hours accepted up to 8 pm
  • No need to post confidential documents
  • Fully encrypted systems for your protection

If you don't have early-repayment penalties

If your current mortgage is outside of any repayment charges, then don't be inclined to just plump for your existing lender out of familiarity.

It's really important in terms of making sure you get good value over the life of your mortgage to regularly get whole-of-market advice.

Assuming that something that made your mortgage challenging previously, will still be a significant factor this time around can lead to huge cost increases in the long-term.

It's easy to look at any cost saving over a short deal period of a couple of years and think it's a fairly modest few hundred pounds, but if you compound that over a lifetime, it can quickly accumulate to life-changing sums of money.

Make sure that at least every couple of years you speak to a whole-of-market advisor and see what alternative options could cost.

Porting an existing mortgage to a new property

We can normally still arrange the mortgage for you where you want to move an existing loan to a new property and we can help you understand whether this is the best solution.

There are complex cost issues to consider, your current loan may have early-repayment charges which extend beyond your intended completion date but there are other issues to factor into the decision.

Any additional borrowing will normally need to be taken on a new product, and this can lead to split repayment-penalty end dates and compound future costs for remortgaging, as well as meaning you might have to do it twice as often.

In some cases, new borrowing might be possible on the existing product and may make porting preferable.

Sometimes the cost of paying repayment penalties might be largely met by savings from swapping to more competitive rates available at the time and often a customer may decide to pay the penalties to eliminate the additional complexity of having two different products.

We can help you understand the cost differences of either option and whether porting is the right course for you.

Typical considerations when buying a new home

Property survey

Whenever you buy a property, care needs to be taken to ensure you avoid those with serious issues.

Although many lenders charge a “valuation fee” and others offer this service free of charge, this isn’t for your benefit. And it may not even involve a physical inspection of the property.

It is increasingly common for this to involve only an electronic valuation estimate even on a house purchase with a small deposit.

This means you cannot sue the lender's surveyor even if they miss significant property defects. Several very high-profile court cases have confirmed that the surveyor has no legal duty of care to you even though you may have paid for this “basic valuation”.

So you must consider getting a more thorough survey from an independent surveyor.

We will always guide customers on the best time to proceed with this, to avoid duplicated costs or unnecessary surveys.

We also try to find any known issues with a property before application as well. This involves checking google Streetview and the details of the property’s layout, construction and legal tenure to screen for potential problems.

Although we cannot guarantee that such issues are found before an application we frequently find issues of concern to raise for homebuyers such as nearby commercial property problems.

Completion Dates

You will need to consider intended completion dates and ensure that your mortgage offer and all parties in the chain can work with the intended timescales.

This is especially important where you cannot complete imminently due to repayment penalties or buying a new build for example.

Breaking a chain or completing a purchase before your sale

In some scenarios, you might want to break the chain in a purchase, which is common on new build properties, where the developer may insist on buyers being chain-free but it could also just be your preference to avoid delays or the potential for gazumping for example.

Whether this is possible will be different for each client and depends a lot on how much cash might be available for a deposit or the potential for raising funds from the existing property or other sources like a personal loan.

A broker like us can help you weigh up the different options that might be suitable like bridging loans, further advances and secured loans and what set up will work best.

THINK CAREFULLY BEFORE SECURING OTHER DEBTS AGAINST YOUR HOME. YOUR HOME MAY BE REPOSSESSED IF YOU DO NOT KEEP UP REPAYMENTS ON YOUR MORTGAGE OR ANY OTHER DEBT SECURED ON IT. WE TYPICALLY CHARGE AN ADVICE FEE OF £299 PAID UPON FULL MORTGAGE OFFER. SOME BUY TO LET AND COMMERCIAL LOANS ARE NOT REGULATED BY THE FINANCIAL CONDUCT AUTHORITY
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RIGHTMORTGAGEADVICE.CO.UK IS AN APPOINTED REPRESENTATIVE OF JULIAN HARRIS MORTGAGES LTD, AUTHORISED AND REGULATED BY THE FINANCIAL CONDUCT AUTHORITY. FSA NO 304155
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