Buying a house
Mar. 9th, 2004 01:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ciphergothI've decided to buy a house. Somewhere on the southern end of the Northern line, with two double bedrooms and gas central heating.
Flood me with advice!
For "house", read "living accommodation of some sort", by the way; in Edinburgh I'd write "flat" without thinking.
I was going to rent, so that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
spikeylady could get out of her Wimbledon place and to make sure we can live together happily before buying. But she is now moving in with ergotia and lilithmagna, so we're in no rush; and the mortgage payments would be something I could afford by myself if need be, so in the unlikely event that we can't live together happily it won't be a disaster. And it seems wisest to get out of paying rent to someone else and start paying it to myself as soon as possible. Plus it means we can choose our own fridge and suchlike - I really enjoyed that flexibility when we lived in Mir.
To forestall some advice:
Flood me with advice!
For "house", read "living accommodation of some sort", by the way; in Edinburgh I'd write "flat" without thinking.
I was going to rent, so that
spikeylady could get out of her Wimbledon place and to make sure we can live together happily before buying. But she is now moving in with ergotia and lilithmagna, so we're in no rush; and the mortgage payments would be something I could afford by myself if need be, so in the unlikely event that we can't live together happily it won't be a disaster. And it seems wisest to get out of paying rent to someone else and start paying it to myself as soon as possible. Plus it means we can choose our own fridge and suchlike - I really enjoyed that flexibility when we lived in Mir.To forestall some advice:
- Yes, I'll go to a FIMBRA-regulated financial adviser
- Yes, I'll get a capital-and-interest repayment mortgage, not an endowment or interest-only
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-03-09 09:17 am (UTC)I did that - printed off some sample mortgage figures, took them to the IFA, and essentially said "Can you beat these, and what catches are there, and what are the differences between them?"
As it happened, he could beat them, having access to more choices. We didn't have to pay him anything either - 3/4 of the mortgages he could offer offered him commission, and we went for one of those. If we'd gone for one which didn't offer him commission we'd have had to pay his fee ourselves.
It comes down to a gamble on whether you think interest rates are going to go up or down, and by how much.