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

Get on to your broker and get an application in with another lender. Finance Ireland with their new rates are best avoided now IMHO.

I went directly to to the bank. And I'm now stuck in that limbo of getting the loan offer but not being able to do anything with it. Ugh, I should have waited. I just wanted to make sure that I would actually be approved. 😑

Don’t listen to anyone who gives you this advice without seeing it.

Spoke to the solicitor and her advice is to ask my broker to plead my case if rates increase between now and drawdown.

The bank may be open to negotiation.

Just discovered this thread and I can relate to so many posts.

We've been on a house buying journey (FTBs) essentially for the last 4 years with many bumps along the way: pulling out of sales due to bad surveys, losing mortgage approval during COVID due to redundancy, moving to temporary accommodation in different parts of the country to get a feel for where we wanted to buy. We finally got back on track at the start of this year and got AIP in March.

Started bidding on properties in April and went sale agreed in June on the 3rd property we bidded on, which in hindsight was our favourite (we were glad to have lost out on the other 2). There was tenants in it so had to wait until September for them to move out.

After a very stressful period trying to get our loan offer from BOI, we finally feel like we're nearly ready to get the keys (solicitor is returning the loan pack to the bank this week) and closing date is next Friday. I'm hoping bank release the mortgage funds without delay, which hasn't been their style so far but we will have to wait and see.

It seems like everyone's experience is different based on this thread, even if they are with the same lender. With BOI, we felt document checks and getting the loan offer was very stressful & slow but it seems others had a smooth experience. We gave up on their online hub because the communication was poor & slow and started to call their helpline everyday and that moved things along. They also made a number of data entry mistakes on their end which was frustrating.

It's definitely been the most stressful thing we've gone through and the relief when we get in will be incredible. I saw a poster a few pages back say "I don't care about the rising interest rates as it's between homelessness and a home for us" and that rang very true. We had agreed that if we hadn't found a home by September this year that we would be emigrating so to be nearly at the finish line now with everything in place feels surreal.

Brief update.. closed the sale on our new home. 8 weeks from sale agreed to closing. Felt we got some value as the house was renovated, extended and ticked the majority of our boxes. (generally looked at probates before and viewed over 45 houses in a year).

5 months between both sales. A painful enough year but we’ve a beautiful home. Looking forward to making lots of new memories with our young kids in it :-)

This thread helped a lot , esp. advice around viewing as many houses as possible and keeping an eye on all bidding etc. you get to understand EAs better and the market..

Good luck with it all. I would be interested to hear how smoothly the closing goes after your long journey. BOI is painful with all the really silly things they need - we applied to them too after the original lender taking forever. Not good for the blood pressure.

Possible tip for anyone buying a new build and worrying about interest rates.

You can get your final valuation done before you snag and the bank will release funds. Then just instruct your solicitor to hold the money until snagging is completed. It might save you a few weeks of worry.

Make a list of desirable properties online and see what you feel comfortable paying for the apartment. There's no issues offering under asking if that's what you think it's worth.

Be prepared to walk away if you you think it's overpriced compared to others on offer.