Priya's message arrived at 11.14pm on Tuesday 10 March: "what's a Level 2 survey and do we actually need one??" Two question marks, which from Priya means she had been looking at a website for an hour. She and Dan, who carried our sofa through the back door last February, have started looking in Hillsborough. A colleague of Matt's and his partner have started looking in Meersbrook too, so for the past fortnight our front room has been an unofficial advice surgery.
I'm not qualified to advise anybody on a house. What I can do is say what we did, what went wrong and who we paid to know better. Here is what we said, over a lot of tea.
What we said we did
- Lifetime ISA: ours had to be open for twelve months before the money could go towards the house, and the purchase had to complete within 90 days of the withdrawal. That was the rule when we did it, so check the current one with the provider and your conveyancer.
- Survey: we chose a Level 2 for a 1930s brick terrace, at £560, and still think it was right. A surveyor can tell you which level suits yours.
- Gutters: we saw the house on two dry days and learned about its gutters later. I told them to look at the gutters and the foot of the walls when it's raining.
- Broadband: look up. The line to our house comes from a pole across the road, and that pole cost us 13 days on a phone hotspot.
- Chief rent: ours is £1.85 a year from 1936, and Sheffield has plenty of them. We asked our conveyancer, who explained it in an email I read twice.
- Electrics: our electrical report was £180 at the time and we hadn't put it in the budget. It found a scorched socket, so I told them to add a line for theirs.
- Buildings insurance: ours had to start at exchange, because the lender required it. Ask your conveyancer when yours needs to begin.
- A list: we started a "house tab" in the spreadsheet in the first week, and it has paid for itself in arguments avoided.
What we left to other people
Anything with a legal or financial answer belongs to their solicitor or broker, not to me. We told them we'd paid our conveyancer to read the title and the searches, and our broker to explain the mortgage options, because we couldn't have done either ourselves. I said nothing about stamp duty, apart from that the thresholds have changed since we bought and could change again. Their solicitor will have the current numbers, and mine would be out of date by the time I finished typing.
We also didn't say which mortgage to choose, or how much to offer, or whether a house was worth it. I know what we chose and what it cost, and that is as far as it goes. Priya asked me straight out whether she should take the fee-free rate, and I said I'd tell her what we did and then she should ring her broker.
Where I went wrong
On Thursday 12 March at 9.10pm I sent Priya the whole list, all eight points in one message. She replied "ok!!" and was silent for three days. Matt read the thread over my shoulder and said, "You've sent her a mortgage application." He was right, and I cut it down.
The short version I gave her instead was three things. Go and see the house in the rain if you can. Read whatever your solicitor sends you, and ring them about anything that looks odd. And write down every pound from the start, because the pound you can't account for is always the big one. That fitted on the back of an envelope, and she took a photo of it.
Priya has her second viewing on Saturday at 10.30am, in a street in Hillsborough I could walk with my eyes shut. The forecast says rain, which for once is good news. I'm lending Dan my head torch for the loft hatch.
