How To Buy A House

The process for buying a property in this country is completely broken. I thought wading through the sludge that is the financial services industry day in, day out was bad - but nothing can prepare you for the utter misery of managing all the stakeholders involved in a property transaction.

Honestly, how is it this bad? It is 2026 for goodness sake - can the robots not handle it all yet?

I promise this isn’t going to be a total moan-athon. Sarah and I moved into our new home last Friday, and we are delighted and feeling very fortunate. The warm and fuzzy feelings we are currently basking in go some way to eradicating the frustration of the past year and a half, but not all of it.

I feel getting through the whole thing is somewhat of a rite of passage. If you, or anyone you know, is about to embark on this endeavour - then it might be helpful to know a) what I think we did well; and b) what mistakes I think we made, so you can hopefully avoid some of the pitfalls.

First up, the good stuff.

We saw loads of places…

You'll start off with a “wish list” of what you think is important to you, but the only way to really get a sense of what is realistic is to see as many places as possible. See everything you can - new homes and fixer uppers, smaller places and bigger places, in areas you are both familiar and unfamiliar with.

By doing this you’ll establish what really is important to you, which is particularly crucial when you are in a couple - because invariably the two of you will want to prioritise different things.

I am very lucky to have a partner who focusses on the practical stuff - side access, driveways, quiet roads. I, on the other hand, am a magpie - easily seduced by nice kitchen cabinets.

Seeing loads of places gives you a better idea of what trade offs you are willing to accept. It will also give you a flavour of what the market is like in your given area at that given time.

…and started early

We had property to sell, but almost as soon as this was on the market (and a little bit before truth be told) we started looking.

Some vendors will be sniffy about letting you have a look before you are “proceedable” i.e. have enough cash to buy the property, or have your property under offer. But those people need to get real.

Starting the process early also gives you a mental benchmark of what is out there more quickly.

Be realistic if you are selling

"Endowment bias” refers to the tendency for people to value something more highly simply because they own it, compared to how they'd value the identical thing if they didn't own it yet.

Folk, therefore, consistently overvalue the home they live in. I get the sense this phenomenon is particularly common in London, where the average person who has owned their home for ten plus years think they are a property genius because the price has gone up a fair bit.

This is exacerbated by the fact that many agents, in a bid to get the listing, will “butter up” the vendor by giving them an over-valuation.

We found a lot of the prices we came across not to be based in reality. And those properties are, mostly, still sat on the market or have been pulled without offer.

It helps to be organised

Sarah can take the credit for this, rather than me. If you are selling something, try to get all of the documentation for your property into a single binder, so that you can have everything in one place. Invaluable when people ask the most obscure questions about what material your balcony is constructed from.

From a buying standpoint - have a spreadsheet so you can compare the features of each property you see, when you see them (price, square footage, distance to nearest station etc etc). This will give you a decent, hopefully relatively objective record of everything you have seen and the trade offs.

We stuck to our budget…

The oldest trick in the estate agent’s book is to establish your budget, then show you stuff just above it.

This works because we see the slightly more expensive place and begin to imagine how great life would be there. It then becomes very difficult to “go backwards” and put an offer on the more sensible place, that by this point feels like a bit of a downgrade.

Try not to get sucked into this game - if you stretch yourself on the mortgage it could consume a lot of mental and emotional bandwidth in future. And mental and emotional bandwidth is quite important.

Not our house. Image credit: Shutterstock.

When it comes to making an offer, take your time as well - good decisions are made slowly. Maybe this is a function of the market in London at the moment, but we found we had plenty of time to decide before we made an offer on anything.

It is incredibly tempting when you see something you love, to jump in and try to get in ahead of anyone else. And estate agents are more than happy to play on this FOMO - they do, after all, work for the seller rather than the buyer and this is really important to bear in mind.

…but managed to futureproof ourselves

From a financial standpoint, what really knackers you when it comes to property, is the bid-offer spread. The costs of transacting a sale and purchase are pretty material because of estate agent and solicitors’ fees, as well as stamp duty, so as a rule of thumb you want to try to minimise the amount of trades you do during your life.

I appreciate I am speaking out of both sides of my mouth here a bit, saying don’t stretch yourself but at the same time try to buy something you’d be happy in for at least ten years. There is a balance required for sure, but it is doable.

And now, the things I don’t think we did so well.

Took people at their word

God, this is a depressing one.

It is pretty healthy to go through life assuming that most folks’ intentions are honourable. But there is something about this process that brings out the absolute worst in people. Everyone lies.

Lies about the position they are in, lies about why they are moving, lies about how much interest there has been, lies about their borrowing position.

We saw a place we really liked, and put an offer in. That offer was accepted, and we were told the property had been taken off the market pending confirmation of the sellers’ onward move.

But it hadn’t been taken off the market, and you can see where this is going. We got gazumped and it turned out our offer had been used as leverage to get a better price. I wasn’t a happy bunny.

Not particularly honourable - but these things happen. So it is probably a good idea to go into the process mentally prepared for the worst behaviour.

We got ahead of ourselves

We had a sale and purchase agreed in September last year, and immediately started planning what we would do with the new property when we got into it. Where the furniture would go, what room we would redecorate first - that kind of thing.

But the process ended up being dragged out for five full months, at which point it fell through. We were naturally very disappointed, but it would have been wise to remember that having an offer accepted is just the beginning. Don’t get too excited too early.

The whole process will probably take twice as long as you expect it to. Which brings me neatly onto…

Try not to scrimp on your conveyancing solicitor

If you can find a great conveyancing solicitor, use them. Even if they cost a bit more, they are worth their weight in gold.

We didn’t. And ours’ were, let’s politely say, crap.

As a client, if you are having to manage the process yourself it can turn into a massive time suck. Which isn’t really ideal because you probably have a day job to be getting on with and a life to lead.

None of the above is intended to represent advice to any individual. If you have any questions regarding your individual situation, feel free to reach out to me at david@beechgrovefinancialplanning.co.uk or consult with any other regulated financial adviser.