When buying a house I found that some of the most stressful parts are when I found out that we missed something. We kept checking and double-checking we knew what we had to do, yet still we missed things. Thankfully we got a good solicitor who reminded us of requirements as well as sorted things out for us when needed. Yet in my searches I didn't find a complete list of all the things needed to be done. I shall attempt to add yet another list to all those, so maybe eventually there will be an intersection that is complete.
Step one is starting to look for places. You can either look yourself on websites like Zoopla and RightMove, or if you have money to spare, hire a buyer's agent who will do the search for you. The median time in the UK from starting to look to completing (that is getting the keys) is 6 months. For me it is going to be just under 10 months however. The search should continue even after you've found a place, until you have your offer accepted, and passively keeping an eye out until exchange.
Talking to mortgage brokers is a free first step to do. I've talked to two. One recommended by an agent of a place we ended up not going for, and another recommended by a co-worker. Ended up going with the latter as they seemed more professional and more knowledgeable. The initial talk will give you an idea of how much you can borrow in some orders of magnitude. Once you decide on a broker they will ask you to send them your financials and they'll get you a few estimates on how much you can afford.
The fees of the mortgage broker were 1,000£ for us. Which due to us taking quite a while to exchange, the brokers probably ended up making it back for us many times over. Because it took us so long to exchange the mortgage rates changed, and they reapplied for us when the rates went down from 1.55% to 1.25%. I would say a mortgage broker is 100% worth it.
Note: The mortgage rates here were and are below inflation. In this case even if we hypothetically had all the money outright it would still have been beneficial to take out a mortgage.
Eventually focusing on an area makes it easier to keep an eye on the places coming and going on the market. I was looking at one point at places all around London, but there was way too much, and I had too little information on the area. Not to mention arranging viewings was a lot harder for anything further away. As a result we decided to keep looking within the area we were currently living in. Not only did this have the advantage of us already knowing the area, and its peculiarities, but also we could walk to the viewings and walk around the place at different points in the day to figure out whether it was loud, or busy.
Great so we've found a place. This is good, we now need to do some extra research. We had 3 places on the short list, 2 of which we made offers on.
This is the place where you can start talking to solicitors to see if they have availability.
A lot of investigation on places cost money. But there are stuff one can do for free to figure out details about the place that could affect its value, resell-ability, risks, etc. Here's what I looked at:
With the research done above I managed to approximate how much a place was worth. In both cases the places had been sold rather recently so making calculations on the value was a lot easier as it would likely be in line with the general increase of house prices.
The first place we made an offer was asking for more than 30% over what these calculations were showing, without having done major renovation works. We decided to go on the higher band of what such estimate even so the seller never budged. The place was already on the market with the second agent, having been initially placed on the market 4 months before.
The second place we made an offer on was the one we got. And there was a lot less uncertainty about it. We were the first and only people to see it on the market. This didn't play great in negotiations however, as the sellers knew if they got an offer that quickly, they would have gotten more if they got an offer from the first people to see it. We made an initial offer of a bit less. As they themselves had only bought it 4 years before, we made an offer that we estimated to be house cost + stamp duty. That was not acceptable, but we expected that. It would however have been irresponsible not to try to get a smaller price.
We finally managed to knock 3% off the price. So not a lot. But after some research we worked out that that may have been favourable to the sellers. Apparently a lot of estate agents have it in their contract that if someone offers you asking price, then you are liable for their commission, even if you do not end up selling the place. Which is a risky move.
Negotiation books can seem to be a lot more prescriptive on the matter. Do your research and figure out what the place is worth, knock 20-10% off that price and that's the point to start negotiations. Information on how long the place had been on the market comes in handy here. I can recommend Never Split the Difference. It explains how people can make decisions based on time pressures, as well as helping identify what to bring to the table. We had to offer flexibility moving in, and that was what got our offer accepted.
We thought finding a house was the hard part. Little did we know the gargantuan amount of paperwork needed to make it happen. I've written another post here on the steps we went through for it.