Forces Homes Newsletter

Five Reasons to use Forces Homes!

Reason 4

Performing miracles!

A question we are often asked is why should I pay to use your services when I can do it myself... and it is a fair question!

The answer...

because this is not just about reaching the finishing line, which many don't, but more importantly how much it costs you to get there...

We have heard many stories over the years of clients who have tried to do it themselves and failed losing hundreds of pounds in the process. I think the average is about £1,200, but we have had cases where it has cost them in excess of £5,000 and they ended up with nothing to show for it. Worse still are those that got to completion and then realised that they had made a mistake.

Getting through a purchase takes knowledge and skill, even those that appear to be a straight forward deal on the surface can quickly become very complex, if issues are picked up during the course of the survey or legal searches.

Without a doubt one of the most frustrating beliefs is that buyers think the estate agent will look after them. It is scary how often buyers will hang on every word the estate agent tells them... lets face it they are paid by the seller and they are going to be paid a percentage of whatever they manage to sell the house for, so it is to their benefit to get the buyer to pay as much as possible.

Further as they are contracted to the seller and have no legal obligation to the buyer, they don't care if the property you purchase will have resale issues in the future, because if it doesn't sell, they don't get paid. A case of buyer beware.

Below are just 2 examples of difficult purchases that would never have reached completion without our assistance.

With a low budget and difficult criteria, we found this house after a very long search. Unfortunately the survey picked up some issues with the roof and chimney and placed a £3,000 retention on the mortgage. A retention quite simply means that the lender will not release all the funds until the work has been carried out. Usually there are two ways to deal with this, one is that the seller pays for the work, the receipts are sent to the lender, the retention is removed and the purchase proceeds as normal.

The second option is that the buyer accepts to take on the work, they have to find the £3,000 they are short in order to complete and they then have the work carried out at their own expense and recover the £3,000 from the lender once it is done.

Unfortunately the sellers did not have any money, our clients only had enough money for the purchase, the mortgage company would not allow a cash back from the sellers on completion and even if they reduced the price of the house the £3000 still would have needed to be found to do the work and the retention would remain in place until the work was done.

At this point all parties were prepared to accept that the deal was dead. However, we came up with a solution that both our solicitors and the sellers solicitors thought was absolutely crazy. We exchanged contracts with a 1 week delay for legal completion to allow all the work to carried out and rather than send the deposit over to the sellers to exchange contracts we used it to pay for the work. We sent the receipts into the mortgage company, the retention was lifted and we completed on time.

The beauty of this was the vendors didn’t have to physically cough up the cash but in theory took a £3000 drop off the asking price, our clients didn’t lose out either, the money they were going to send in to exchange contracts was used for the work so again they were not any worse off, everybody happy, deal done!

Gazumping has returned to the market, the definition of gazumping is where a buyer accepts an offer, but then later accepts a higher offer. Even if the first buyer has paid out the seller is not liable for any costs!

This is a problem the following clients were finding was a very common practice in the area they were looking.

Our clients had been searching for sometime for a property and had lost a few houses they were interested in. Unfortunately for them there was fierce competition in this area and they just didn't seem to be able to view houses fast enough before they were sold.

By the time they came across this one they were a little despondent as there was considerable interest in it.

A repossession new to market and advertised considerably below market value everyone was expecting a bidding war to break out. Now, what is important to understand about repossessions is that they have to stay on the market until exchange of contracts and at anytime someone can come in with a higher offer and start the process again. By this time any money you have spent on solicitors, searches, survey etc will be lost.

The clients viewed, the clients liked, the offer went in at the asking price, now the race was on to exchange. This process normally takes at best between 21 & 28 days and this is usually the deal with repossessed properties. However with so much interest we couldn't afford to take this time, but before we could exchange contracts, the survey had to be carried out, the solicitor required the mortgage offer, which won't be released until the survey is done, the legal searches had to be in and the solicitor had to process the contracts and plans.

Only 1 week into the purchase and we received a call from the agents to warn us that they were expecting someone to come into the office in the afternoon with an offer exceeding our clients. With a final push to ensure everything was in place we exchanged contracts with only minutes to spare that Friday afternoon.

I can not stress how difficult it was to do this, it was only through the fact that we have a direct relationship with the search company that managed to get the legal searches back within a few days rather than the 3 weeks it usually takes. We had to call in the assistance of a second solicitor and our broker was on the case daily to push along the mortgage company. It was a major team effort, but we got there in the end.

Client Feedback

Both my wife and I would like to take the time to thank Forces Homes for all the time and effort that was put in to ensuring that our property purchase has finally completed.

It was through Forces Homes' hard work and diligence that they ensured we were given everything from the best mortgage available to us, using conscientious and experienced mortgage advisors and solicitors, all helping to complete on a very difficult purchase.

They informed us each step of the way, offering both guidance and support in every aspect of the property purchase, proving to give invaluable advice in all matters. Their personal approach and professional conduct made our difficult property purchase run as smoothly as possible, without their help we would have given up on our new home long ago.

WO2 & Mrs Jones

There is never a bad time to buy only a bad time to sell.

Missed some? Here are reasons 1 - 3

Reason 1

Reason 2

Reason 3

Want to learn more:

To Buy or Not to Buy

Stamp Duty

House Price Prediction

Mortgages

Lending

Buy Now

Hibernation

Prices are on the up

Property Boom

Rogue Letting Agents

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Address and Registered Office

Forces Homes Ltd,

Borough House Business Centre, 5 Borough Road, Richmond, North Yorkshire, DL10 4SX

Tel: 0044 (0)1748 821118 Fax: 0044 (0)8708 386 562 Email: enquiries@forceshomes.co.uk

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Company No: 5902961 Registered in England & Wales