Today, I am going to share with you guys my tips for buying a house. If you are already a homeowner, I am sure that you guys will be very familiar with what I am going to write about. Buying a house can be both the most challenging and most rewarding thing that you can do.
For example, I wouldn’t change our home for the world, but it took us a very long time to get here. We got the keys to our home back in 2019, however we initially started our house hunt in 2016. In that time, we had so many nightmares and setbacks. It all came together in the end, but I certainly learnt some things that are worth sharing. Here are my tips for buying a house.
Ensure there is good communication.
Communication is key when it comes to buying a house. This topic will lead through everything else that I am going to mention in this post. When we bought our first home, we thought that you hand things over to your solicitor and they deal with everything. However, we very quickly realised that wasn’t the case. I kept a very clear list of everybody that was involved in the process, where they fit in and what/when I was expecting to hear from them. It may sound far too much, however I am confident that I shaved months from the process by doing so.
Do everything as quickly as you can.
Something which is incredibly key is that you do things as quickly as possible. A prime example of this was when we were buying our property. The family which we were buying our home from were professionals. The woman was a teacher, and the male was a doctor. They had very little time and even though they had the answers to the solicitors’ questions, they didn’t respond quickly. In some instances, it would take them weeks to respond. They slowed the chain down immensely and then moaned themselves when things didn’t move quickly.
Try to speak to both ends of the chain directly.
This is not ideal, but it really helped us. When we were buying our home, the people who were selling the house were stuck in a nasty and slow-moving chain. I think we all got unlucky with our solicitors and the real estate agents on top of that were very poor. In the end, we took control of the situation. We took control of the people that were selling and made them communicate directly. Granted, this isn’t the normal and you should operate by your representatives, but if they are slacking, you need to do something about it.
Have a contingency plan.
As I mentioned in the beginning of this post, before we got our house, we had a few snags. Things didn’t go to plan and numerous times we were back at square one. The thing that really helped us was that we had a contingency plan. For example, if this doesn’t go to plan, what are we going to do, where are we going to live? This is something that is an absolute must if you are stuck in the middle of a chain, waiting for people to purchase you house. Think forward, what do you need to do to protect your space?
