Buying a house

[ciphergoth]

I'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 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

Comments

[bootpunk.livejournal.com]

> The IMF has requested that the Bank of England increase the interests rates

I'm sorry that I'm jumping in to the thread very late, but I just had to point out that the IMF has said nothing of the sort. The IMF has broadly praised the UK economic performance, whilst expressing worries about the housing market amongst other things, but those worries are hardly going to prompt them to call for a rise in interest rates that would create the very housing market crash they caution about. The report in question (The Annual Article IV Consultation) is available here or there is a brief summary from the Beeb here.

One thing that the IMF and other international bodies have been saying very publicly is that the global housing market looks like it is in a bubble - this announcement was made in the last 3-4 weeks, I'd link to the Economist story but you need to be subbed. The UK is looking a lot better than countries such as Australia taken in a wider context. A global housing market retrenchment could be a shock to the system, tho' not on the dot-com scale.

Fwiw I'm split between looking now and waiting a year. I'd probably wait, as altho' I don't expect house prices to crash in London I don't expect them to soar either. I do expect some harsh readjustments outside of London, one of the big ones likely being Edinurgh.