Buying your first home: The legal side

If you have been reading the blog for a little while you will know that I am purchasing my families home. I spoke a little about it here, so feel free to have a little read to catch up! It’s okay, I will wait… Welcome back! Today I want to talk about the legal side of purchasing a home and how out of my depth I was. Shall we?

Conveyancers

Luckily my mortgage broker Halifax have a list of conveyancers who they work with and I was able to select which one was best. Sometimes this could be down to the amount that they charge, but for me, I selected one that was closest to me as it meant I was able to get there whenever I needed to. I have no idea on what they do with the process etc. But I do know that the fees are crazy! I have been lucky and I am only paying £1001 for it.

The bonus

Halifax offered me £750 cashback for choosing them to purchase the house. I have been able to use this £750 to give towards the conveyancer fees so the overall payment is less for me to actually pay out. There may be a slight issue with this, as solicitors want the fees on completion day and Halifax may not provide the money to me until a day or so after. So I am having this chased up before I cement the completion date, in case I need to gain up those extra funds!

The add-ons

One thing I didn’t expect from all of this, is all the little add ons that I would have to pay. This could be my fault for not doing all the research, but I know that I have done some, but there were some things that were specific to Mainland UK whereas Northern Ireland has their own rules.

Due to my dad owning the house since the 80’s he never had to worry about registering the house and it’s land as that ruling only came in a fee years ago. The same was for a fee other things. But in the end I have to pay an extra £180 to register the house as the new buyer. This is a tad frustrsting, but I had arranged my finances to accommodate something like this.

Out of my depth

When I sat down with my conveyancer she guided me through all the outstanding paperwork and other points of information that I had to be aware of. I will lift up my hands and say that I didn’t have a clue at all of the in’s and out’s that she was speaking to me about. I felt a little stupid for not knowing these things, but then I remembered that I probably shouldn’t feel too bad as most people only buy a house twice in their life. Why would I know all the tidbits of a purchase the first time around?

I assisted her with queries about the house (seeing as I live there) such as the ground floor extension out the back. She queried the dates etc. So i said I would get them, but gave her rough ideas of building work.

We sent a tentative completion date and that was that. I had signed the contract and all I had to do was wait for info about the cashback and for when my dad had signed it as well!

So with a tiny bit of luck, by the 30th April, I will own my first home and then I can annoy you with home decor posts!

Let me know if you enjoyed this post! If you want to chat more about any of my posts, please follow me on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook to also receive updates. Until next time, thanks for reading and I hope to see you again soon!