Currently buying/selling a house? How is it going? READ MOD NOTE POST #1

A big one is people who's companies are on EWSS. You're able to go the whole way through the process but most banks wont let you drawdown if your company is claiming it.

As a buyer it makes sense to try your luck as nobody knows when it will end and banks do make exceptions but it's a big reason for things falling through.

Another common one is mortgage protection. It doesn't seem to be well known how difficult it can be to get for those with underlying conditions and people dont allow enough time to sort it. It can take months and months and you may not be able to get cover at all which can lead to the sale falling through

Bidding has gone crazy, every house I've been bidding on lately has gone well above 100k in the bidding race.

AIP is an approval for essentially the max that a bank will 'in principle' give you. Full approval is against a specific property and is looked at by the banks underwriters. The amount may reduce the amount offered due to a valuation report (i.e that the house is seriously over valued) , change in the buyers circumstance etc

AIP is usually fine but is not a guaranteed amount from the bank

What are all the types of insurance/assurance you need as a FTB? Mortgage protection, house insurance, life assurance? All the all mandatory?

Who are the main providers to go with ?

You need house insurance (reinstatement insurance so that the house will be rebuilt to current state if destroyed, you don’t have to have contents insurance as far as the bank is concerned)

you need life assurance, which is assigned to the bank for an amount greater than the value of the mortgage.

mortgage protection is a form of life insurance, where the amount they pay out is reduced in line with the amount owed on the mortgage. It’s cheaper than regular life assurance because the regular one pays a fixed amount regardless of when the person dies.

if you get a house for 400k and a mortgage for 350k, over 30 years, mortgage protection will only ever pay out a slight bit more than the mortgage is at. So in 20 years the person dies there’s probably 100k on the mortgage and the assurance pays out 102k or so. Life assurance is more expensive but would pay 360k at any point until the policy expires.

The list of companies receiving it is publicly available so possibly they just check that? But maybe they've started to change things.

Unfortunately sometimes Banks add extra conditions onto the loan offer that may not have been included on the original AIP. Or employer may have been claiming covid supports and it's only when buyer gets required docs that they see that themselves....or buyer may become sick. Anything can happen that you may not have expected the day you go sale agreed on a house. The timeline between sale agreed and drawdown can be very long and plenty of things can happen between those two dates.

In the Buyer's mind, they have no reason to expect drawdown to be refused when they go sale agreed but things can happen that is out of their control and be at the mercy of the bank...hence sale falling through.

chains also happen because unless you are very well off 1) won't be able to afford to pay two mortgages and 2) a bank won't let you have two primary residence mortgages

Yes, you can use existing equity for the purposes of the 20% deposit required by the mortgage provider. But you'll still need cash to put down as the booking deposit and I would think as the deposit % (usually 10%?) required at signing of contracts. Maybe someone else can tell if the requirement of cash at the contract signing stage is flexible.

The 10% usually required on signing of contracts can be really problematic when you are relying on the equity from a sale. This can often be reduced by negotiating.

Hi everyone,

I just got accepted on an offer I made and I am getting the ball rolling to sort out all the administrative tasks.

Does anyone have any experience how long from Sale Agreed to receiving keys usually takes?

I'm currently renting and am trying to figure out how to sort out the lease without being homeless for a while :)

Query regarding first mortgage payment - When I was filling out the SEPA Mandate before drawdown I selected the 2nd of each month as my payment date. The purchase of my apartment closed on the 9th of September and I got a letter from Bank of Ireland the following week detailing my payment amount etc. and it said the first payment would be taken the 2nd of November. Does anyone know if the first payment will just be the normal monthly payment or if it will be backdated to the date of drawdown? I just want to make sure I don't get carried away buying things for the apartment and end up with not enough money if they're essentially going to take almost 2 months of a payment on the 2nd of November.

Very much a piece of string question. We went sale agreed on May 6th and picked up the keys on September 7th. We were first in a chain of 3 and both vendors had a house ready to go and were screaming for everything to be done quickly. Like the poster above there were stupid delays with the solicitors being a nightmare, the banks being slow with the release of the deeds (8 weeks), and our vendors having a delay with securing their mortgage protection (one of them had cancer during the time of their first home so they had a nightmare getting it sorted).

From what I've seen here depending on the complexity of the chain the whole process could take anything from 3 months to a year+. Hopefully you'll be closer to the quicker side :) It depends how long your chain is, where you are in it, how good your solicitor/brokers are, and how ready to go your vendors (and their vendors, and their vendors...) are too.

Best of luck with it all!

Happened me with BOI a few years ago and it was just the regular amount. Dates were actually very similar.

Ah I see... Sorry for the confusion I'm buying from a deceased person's estate, one without a mortgage so I presume in my case the deeds are not with any bank (until I draw down the mortgage and lodge deeds with them of course)