Buying a home in Galway

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Step 14: Contract deposit
2008-04-04 12:37:00
This happens at the same time as step 13, but I thought I'd make another step of it to make sure you notice it.When you sign your contracts you will also need to pay the rest of your deposit. This is standard at 10%, but it is usually possible to negotiate it down - for example if you get a 92 or 95% mortgage you may only want to pay 5 or 8% as the deposit and have the rest come directly from your mortgage. Once you have a valid reason your solicitor should be able to agree this with the vendors solicitor.As this is generally delivered as a bank draft (not a cheque), it is a good idea to arrange the bank draft before you sign (a day or two should be enough time, but you should confirm this with your bank as they differ).
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Step 13: Contracts
2008-04-04 12:30:00
The next step is the first legally binding one: Contracts .The vendors (people selling) will draw up contracts of sale with their solicitor. This is a long document - about 30 pages roughly - which has a hell of a lot of legal mumbo-jumbo which all comes down to "We give you cash, you give us house".What they send is a draft contract, and they send that directly to your solicitor. Your solicitor will usually send you some notes on it and maybe some questions. For example, ours asked us to check the land registry documents referred to the right land with the engineer who did our survey. Normal procedure is that you will go into your solicitors office and sign both the loan offer (see step 12) and your sale contracts at the same time in their presence. They send these back to the vendor with a bank draft for your outstanding deposit (Step 14). Usually at this point your solicitor will confirm the charge for their service - the start of your money disappearing!

Check your loan offer
2008-03-31 14:52:00
This may seem very obvious, but it is so important that I am writing a post about it.You will recieve a copy of your loan offer to sign and return, along with a number of related documents. Be sure to check all the details - especially the address. We got ours the other day and realised that the address of the house we are buying in Galway was spelt incorrectly. Initial thought was that it wouldn't matter, but it turned out we needed to get the offer re-issued, causing a few days delay. It is very important to ensure that your names, all amount, and all addresses are spelt correctly. It is up to you to do this as it is you who is signing up for the loan. The last thing we wanted was a delay, but we are delighted to have noticed now while we have time to rectify it rather than when we are signing contracts, or even closing. Luckily we have a great mortgage adviser who was able to get it re-issued in 48 hours.
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Step 12: Formal loan offer
2008-03-25 14:30:00
Once your valuation has been done, your next step is to get your formal loan offer letter from your bank or building society.If you are using a mortgage broker they will take care of this step for you, or if you are organising your mortgage directly with a bank/building society you just need to contact them and ask them to do it for you.At this stage they will again want to check your financial details, and may ask you for bank statements for the period between your initial approval in principle and now. It took about 4 working days for us, which I believe is normal. However it can take a little longer so allow about 2 weeks. You will be sent a copy, and your solicitor will also be sent a copy. It is quite a big document, but it is well worth reading through it all to be sure you know what you are getting. Your solicitor or mortgage broker should be able to answer any questions you have.The copy your solicitor receives will ask them to proceed with the legal formalities and will usu...
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Step 11 - valuation
2008-03-04 16:28:00
So, you have got your engineers report back and it says everything is above board. Well done! You are well on the way. Maybe it brought up a few small issues - if so you can consider going back to the vendor (seller) and seeing if you can wrangle a better deal. Next step, when you have informed your mortgage broker or building society is for a valuation to be done. This costs an average of €150 to be done and they will have a list of valuers available (they will generally select one themselves). These can be auctioneers in the area, or engineers, so do not be surprised if it is someone you have already had dealings with. Prices actually vary here, so if it is possible you can try to get a few quotes. We paid €130, but got a different quote of €180 so there is definitely a bit of difference in the prices you can get.There is very little for you to do in this step. Provide the mortgage broker with the selling auctioneers details (or if it is a person selling directly their detai...
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Don't keep contacting your Solicitor
2008-03-04 16:21:00
When you are sale agreed (if not beforehand too) you will be in contact with your solicitor. This is an essential part of the process, but you should try to cover as much ground every time you are in contact. Solicitor costs are one of the big costs of buying a house, so it is important to keep them as small as possible, and you will be charged fro EVERYTHING they do - be it a photocopy of a document, or sending you an email. For me, working in IT I am used to sending and receiving hundreds of emails every day, so would tend to send them without thinking. Until I realised that each individual reply I get I will be charged for.Now, by this I am not suggesting you don't make proper contact, just that if you are mailing to tell them the sale is agreed, maybe include the contents list in the same mail, the engineers report if you have it already, and maybe the auctioneers details or the vendors details - basically, whatever info you have at hand. The more concise and detailed you are t...

Details for auctioneer when sale agreed
2008-02-28 12:08:00
When you reach an agreement on a price with the vendor (people selling - although you usually negotiate with the auctioneer and don't actually negotiate with the seller directly) you then need to provide the auctioneer with some details:1. A cheque for the deposit (some take a bank transfer or bank draft but mostly it will be a cheque. You should send this by registered post, unless you can easily deliver it in person.2. Give the auctioneer your full name(s) for contracts. This is important especially if you have an abbreviated first name (Joe = Joseph) or a hard to spell surname. I'm sure you get the idea! This can speed up the contracts.3. Your current address.4. Your solicitors details.Then you should get an engineers report done and inform your bank or mortgage broker that you have agreed a sale.
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View 'em all!
2008-02-25 14:12:00
We took another trip down to the West, and were blessed with some excellent Sun for the 5 days. Over 4 days (no viewings on Sundays) we managed to squeeze in 14 viewings.Phew! Bloody exhausting.But I would recommend strongly doing the same, especially if you are buying in a different location to where you are based. For us, it was getting very tiring to go up and down from Dublin to Galway every weekend or two, to see one or two new places, so we build up a load and made a proper, trip out of it.What should you do if you are viewing a load of places?Print out everything you can get on each place. You may not be near a computer/printer while viewing.Staple it together (you'd be surprised how many sheets of paper are now floating around the back of my car!).Staple a list of questions and feedback space to each. We did a standard set and photocopied for each viewing.Space the viewings so you have about half an hour to sit, think and discuss each one - but still allowing yourself enoug...
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Book early to view
2008-02-12 12:59:00
We are planning a few days of looking at places to buy at the moment and one thing we have realised is that you can't turn around on a Wednesday and book to view that Saturday.You'd think sellers would be falling over themselves to make it easy for you to view and possibly buy their houses, but in actual fact there are some places we have been trying to confirm bookings with for over a week now. So - if you want to make the most of your viewing time it is best to try to book well in advance.For timing, we have also found the optimum timing is to make the bookings 1.5 hours apart (unless they are over 30 mins apart in distance). This allows an hour for viewing, which is a lot but you have to allow for the estate agent being late! Then it is good to have about 10 or 15 mins to write down your feelings and observations on the place, and answers you got for your questions. DO write this down immediately as there is nothing worse than spending a day viewing 3 or 4 places and finding t...
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Make a wide search and close it down
2008-02-06 13:28:00
If you are (for example) looking for a 3 bedroom detached house, 10 miles from Galway, then you would probably find about 10 to 30 houses fitting this criteria.We have been trying to find an exact match to our criteria, and while we initially found it (one sale fell though) it is now proving harder.To solve this issue what we have tried now is to widen the search - say for the above example, we would be going 5 to 15 miles and 2 to 4 bedrooms, and including semi detached and bungalows. This would instead bring a result of maybe 200 properties.So, now you have 200 properties and still no match? Well, not exactly. Going through all 200 will take time, but lets face it - this is our home we are talking about so a few hours or days is small potatoes.What's the reason? Well, as you go through 200 properties you do a few things;Find out what you like in each houseFind new things you like that you had not thought ofGet a good idea of what is available for what price range (You'd be surpr...
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Research the area you plan move to
2008-01-22 13:44:00
If like us you are moving to a new city or town, it is very important to research the area well. This would seem like an obvious one to me, but the more I have talked to people who have moved to new towns, the more I find out just upped and went without checking what they were letting themselves in for.Our destination is Galway, so we have used the Internet to start. Sites which we found good are -http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisp lay.php?f=951 (Galway forum on Boards.ie)http://www.galway1.ie/directory /dliving.htm (Directory of handy Galway links)http://www.galwaycity.ie/ (City council - handy to find out about developments)http://www.galway.ie/en/ (County council - as above)http://www.ccprecruit.ie/movewest.h tm (Recruitment - for that all important job!)http://www.lookwest.ie/index.php/gal way.php (Super site on moving to the West)These and other sites will give you a good start, but also drive around the area you want to live in. Be sure to try both on and off peak - you don...
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No emotions without keys
2008-01-10 11:02:00
I am speaking from experience here.Don't let yourself get emotionally attached to a property until you have the keys in your hand. With our house we were already planning where we would put furniture, and thinking of layout/colours. Even the way I just said 'our house' shows how easy it is to get attached. For us the issue is to do with planning laws, but everyone I have talked to has a story of sellers deciding not to sell or selling to someone else for higher price. It is heart-wrenching to be so close to owning a home and starting on that adventure, only to find you have to go back to the drawing board.It is hard, but try to separate yourself emotionally from the purchase until you have closed the sale and have keys in your hand.
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Step 10: Engineers report
2008-01-09 15:38:00
This is something you do not need to do, but our experience has shown it is vital you do.An engineers report is where you hire an engineer to check the property you are going to buy. They give it a thorough run through and also check the property matches the planning application.We had been told this was going to cost us between €400 and €650 euro, but when we actually called up a guy he did it for €200 and has done an excellent job. (If you need on in the Galway area contact me and I will send you details).Anyhow - our experience is a bit crap.Yesterday the engineer rang to let us know he did the report and it was in the post. Apparently the planning laws for large parts of Galway and the West tie new builds to a clause where they must be owner occupied for a number of years (in our case 10). As the house we want to buy is not that old we can't simply buy it. Instead the seller would have to sort it out that they can sell it. So - the relatively smal expense of getting an en...
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Step 9: Get a solicitor
2008-01-07 11:01:00
A very important step is to get a solicitor. Once your offer is accepted you will need to have this sorted out pretty fast, so you may want to do it earlier. I am just telling you what we did....There are two sorts of solicitors as far as I can tell. Those who do a fixed cost and those who are more variable. At the end of the day you usually get what you pay for. We had picked out a couple of fixed cost ones - average basic fee was 1000 and outlays (what they have to pay on your behalf) of about 700. So, we were looking at around 1700 with them.But after talking to a few people we were told that this was the basic service and they would charge us for every little thing and it would be much higher. In the end we decided to go with a firm who have a good reputation. I got a quote and it was about 500 higher, but so far we have found them very good. Of course we have not even signed contracts yet, so it is a bit soon to say for definite.Whatever road you decide to go for, be sure to do...
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Step 8: Pay the booking deposit
2008-01-04 13:34:00
When the offer is accepted you will be asked by the estate agent to pay a booking deposit. This is totally refundable (or should be, so make sure!) and acts as a sort of goodwill gesture to the seller. However, it does not guarantee the sale. This is the point where people are 'gazumped' - meaning the seller sells to another buyer for a higher price even though you have paid the booking deposit. I am not aware of a method of stopping or safeguarding against this, but I guess a speedy signing of contracts is the best bet.The booking deposit can be anything from €2000 to 3% of the buying price. I am not sure what the rules or standards are here. We were asked for 3%. I have heard that it is good to do this through your solicitor - I guess for more formality. We had not chosen our solicitor so just transferred directly to the estate agent. We have not signed contracts yet so I can't tell you much more yet...
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Step 7: Tell the banks and solicitors
2008-01-04 13:32:00
When you make an offer (AND IT IS ACCEPTED) you have to tell the people you are getting a mortgage off - a bank, or else a mortgage broker.You also need to find a solicitor (if you don't have one already) and tell them your offer has been accepted.
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Step 6: Make an offer
2007-12-19 18:14:00
I am not sure what to advise here. What we did was go to see a place again and double check we liked it. Then we went to a hotel and sat over a coffee and decided to put in an offer and decided what we would offer, and what our max price we'd pay was. (As it turned out both were the same). We rang the agent and said that we would like to make an offer. He said he doubted the owner would accept it. We said to ask them anyhow, it was the only offer we would be making.He told us it would be 2 or 3 days before we heard.He rang after 4 and told us they would sell for an extra X thousand. We stood our ground and said thanks and goodbye. They said hold on, we want to think about it for 24 hours. They took 36 to come back and accepted our offer.Now, I have heard a million stories about the whole offer process and here are my thoughts: Decide your max before looking at houses and don't increase it because the house is especially nice. Offer under the asking price. Especially now in the cur...
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Step 5: Start (or continue) looking for a house
2007-12-16 16:51:00
After about eight working days our mortgage adviser rang to let us know we had approval for two different amounts - the amount we wanted to borrow, and one quite a bit higher. The higher one was (as far as I can guess) the most we could borrow. We had not asked for this amount at all.I figure the mortgage adviser was just adding it to encourage us to borrow more - remember, although they are paid by the banks they still get more if you borrow more. I just mention this as it means that as it is in their interest for you to borrow more, they are less likely to give you advice against over borrowing.Well, we know what we can afford so decided to stick with the lower figure (which is still a hell of a lot of debt to be getting into!). As we got our approval the housing market was showing very few sales, and quite a lot of price drops. We found this out by a mixture of watching houses we liked over a number of months, from general newspaper articles, and also fro the lists of price drops...
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Step 4: The waiting game
2007-12-15 14:04:00
This is a pain in the bum.I've never found waiting so hard. All our hopes and dreams were really dependent on the answer to the mortgage application. Are we staying in Dublin? Are we moving to Galway? Will they blame a refusal on my missed credit card payment back in 1992? Will she dump me because of that? Where will I live if we split up over my missed credit card payment causing us to be refused a mortgage? Will I loose my job because I descend into madness with all this infuriating waiting?Yes, it really got me over thinking! I would suggest you try to get away for a couple of days while waiting for a mortgage to be approved. I don't mean blow all those savings, I just mean something to occupy your mind. We just went down to Galway for a weekend and looked at some areas to give ourselves a bit of a mind map of the area we could refer to later when looking through property listings.The other small bit of advice is to ask the mortgage advisor or lending facility how long it will ...
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Step 3: Decide how you will apply
2007-12-14 13:31:00
There are two ways to go about this - you can go to each individual lender and apply yourself in person, or you can get a mortgage broker to do it for you. I am not aware of any other way, but if you are put it as a comment and I will edit this.We decided to go for a mortgage broker, as it is going to be our first time buying a house so we need all the help and advice we can get. There are a lot out there and we selected Homeloans who seem quite good so far (keep reading and I will keep reporting). They allow you to apply online at - http://www.homeloans.ie/I have not figured out why they have the online application forms as they called me back and sent out forms where we filled out the same details. I mention this as if you use them you may want to just ring and get the forms rather than fill out the forms twice.We actually found it quite good as it pointed out the information we needed. Of course you can just look at my previous post and find out!Things I hadn't known:Mortgage br...
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Step 2: Documents, Documents, Documents
2007-12-13 18:37:00
Having started on the saving street we found ourselves broke with nothing to do and had to pass the time while spending no cash. We decided to get ahead of schedule with the documents for our mortgage application. It is surprising what you need so I thought I'd list some of what we had to provide:12 months bank statements.That's worth keeping in mind when you start saving, or even beforehand. If you do not have the statements from 12 months previous, you will be a little peeved when you find out how much the banks charge you for replacements. I was hit with a €6.80 charge from Bank of Ireland for a single statement copy. I was furious and wrote a letter of complaint but have not heard anything back other than a standard issue letter telling me someone was looking into it.6 months salary slips.Another one people will tend not to hold onto. And for me it was a pain as ours are sent electronically. Point to note: there was no issue that they were printouts by me and not the company...
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Step 1: Save money
2007-12-13 16:07:00
This is the start of it all. Even if you are going to go for a 100% mortgage there are a lot of expenses so you should start saving as soon as possible. It is surprising how quickly the time goes by while you are saving, and how much you have to get done in that time. We found that the step from saving to looking for a house flew by, although we were looking online almost from day 1. As they say - no harm in looking.1. Keep savings separateWhen saving it is a good idea to keep your savings separate from your day to day cash. In month one I had everything in one account and found it way too easy to spend an extra couple of euros on lunches or a pint with friends. After that I had a separate account where I put my savings each pay-day and so found it easier to manage my day to day spending separately from my savings.2. Save first thing when you get paidDon't be tempted to put the savings away at the end of the month. I was tempted to do this, thinking I could add the extra I saved to...
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About this blog
2007-12-13 15:42:00
Buying a home is one of those life-changing moves that almost everyone does. If you have done it already you are aware of how mind blowing nerve wrecking and nail biting it is.You are most likely also aware of how many things you have to juggle and arrange in order to secure it all. If you have moved to a different city while securing your first house you will be aware of how near impossible that juggling act can seem.At the moment myself and my partner are in the process of trying to move to Galway city on the West coast of Ireland, from Dublin city on the East coast of Ireland. This involves securing our first mortgage, buying our first home and sorting out finding new jobs or relocating our current ones.My intention here is to provide both a time-line story of our experience, and more importantly provide as much useful information for anyone who may choose to do the same as we have.
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