Research the area you plan move to

If like us you are moving to a new city or town, it is very important to research the area well. This would seem like an obvious one to me, but the more I have talked to people who have moved to new towns, the more I find out just upped and went without checking what they were letting themselves in for.

Our destination is Galway, so we have used the Internet to start. Sites which we found good are -

• http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=951 (Galway forum on Boards.ie)
  
• http://www.galway1.ie/directory/dliving.htm (Directory of handy Galway links)
  
• http://www.galwaycity.ie/ (City council - handy to find out about developments)
  
• http://www.galway.ie/en/ (County council - as above)
  
• http://www.ccprecruit.ie/movewest.htm (Recruitment - for that all important job!)
  
• http://www.lookwest.ie/index.php/galway.php (Super site on moving to the West)

These and other sites will give you a good start, but also drive around the area you want to live in. Be sure to try both on and off peak - you don't want to move in and then find it is the biggest traffic bottle neck in the country at rush hour!

Check for farms if you are rural. The noise of a creamery or smell of a pig sty can ruin your dream country get-away.
If you are in the city, maybe drive through on a weekend night to check there are not a gang of kids drinking at the end of your road.

When you have found the right house, be sure to check that it has the essentials you want: water (mains or group scheme, and if group scheme how much per year?), electricity, phone, broadband (you can check the line with the phone number on BT and Eircom sites) and also see if the heating is solid fuel, gas, or oil.

OK, I could go on forever with the list. My point is - research pays off hugely.

I think there is definitely going to be something that we will discover after we move, but at least if we invest the time now you will not see too many pasts here titles "Why did we move???" in a few months!

No emotions without keys

I am speaking from experience here.

Don't let yourself get emotionally attached to a property until you have the keys in your hand. With our house we were already planning where we would put furniture, and thinking of layout/colours. Even the way I just said 'our house' shows how easy it is to get attached.

For us the issue is to do with planning laws, but everyone I have talked to has a story of sellers deciding not to sell or selling to someone else for higher price. It is heart-wrenching to be so close to owning a home and starting on that adventure, only to find you have to go back to the drawing board.

It is hard, but try to separate yourself emotionally from the purchase until you have closed the sale and have keys in your hand.

Step 10: Engineers report

This is something you do not need to do, but our experience has shown it is vital you do.

An engineers report is where you hire an engineer to check the property you are going to buy. They give it a thorough run through and also check the property matches the planning application.

We had been told this was going to cost us between €400 and €650 euro, but when we actually called up a guy he did it for €200 and has done an excellent job. (If you need on in the Galway area contact me and I will send you details).

Anyhow - our experience is a bit crap.

Yesterday the engineer rang to let us know he did the report and it was in the post. Apparently the planning laws for large parts of Galway and the West tie new builds to a clause where they must be owner occupied for a number of years (in our case 10). As the house we want to buy is not that old we can't simply buy it. Instead the seller would have to sort it out that they can sell it. So - the relatively smal expense of getting an engineers report meant we saved a hell of a lot of costs later, and so have withdrawn our offer.

There were also some other details which didn't match the planing application so all in all I would highly, highly recommend getting an engineers report.

Step 9: Get a solicitor

A very important step is to get a solicitor. Once your offer is accepted you will need to have this sorted out pretty fast, so you may want to do it earlier. I am just telling you what we did....

There are two sorts of solicitors as far as I can tell. Those who do a fixed cost and those who are more variable. At the end of the day you usually get what you pay for. We had picked out a couple of fixed cost ones - average basic fee was 1000 and outlays (what they have to pay on your behalf) of about 700. So, we were looking at around 1700 with them.

But after talking to a few people we were told that this was the basic service and they would charge us for every little thing and it would be much higher. In the end we decided to go with a firm who have a good reputation. I got a quote and it was about 500 higher, but so far we have found them very good. Of course we have not even signed contracts yet, so it is a bit soon to say for definite.

Whatever road you decide to go for, be sure to do it in time. Both the auctioneer/estate agent, and also your mortgage provider, will want to know who it is.

Step 8: Pay the booking deposit

When the offer is accepted you will be asked by the estate agent to pay a booking deposit. This is totally refundable (or should be, so make sure!) and acts as a sort of goodwill gesture to the seller. However, it does not guarantee the sale. This is the point where people are 'gazumped' - meaning the seller sells to another buyer for a higher price even though you have paid the booking deposit. I am not aware of a method of stopping or safeguarding against this, but I guess a speedy signing of contracts is the best bet.

The booking deposit can be anything from €2000 to 3% of the buying price. I am not sure what the rules or standards are here. We were asked for 3%. I have heard that it is good to do this through your solicitor - I guess for more formality.

We had not chosen our solicitor so just transferred directly to the estate agent. We have not signed contracts yet so I can't tell you much more yet...

Step 7: Tell the banks and solicitors

When you make an offer (AND IT IS ACCEPTED) you have to tell the people you are getting a mortgage off - a bank, or else a mortgage broker.

You also need to find a solicitor (if you don't have one already) and tell them your offer has been accepted.

Step 6: Make an offer

I am not sure what to advise here. What we did was go to see a place again and double check we liked it. Then we went to a hotel and sat over a coffee and decided to put in an offer and decided what we would offer, and what our max price we'd pay was. (As it turned out both were the same).

We rang the agent and said that we would like to make an offer. He said he doubted the owner would accept it. We said to ask them anyhow, it was the only offer we would be making.

He told us it would be 2 or 3 days before we heard.

He rang after 4 and told us they would sell for an extra X thousand. We stood our ground and said thanks and goodbye. They said hold on, we want to think about it for 24 hours. They took 36 to come back and accepted our offer.

Now, I have heard a million stories about the whole offer process and here are my thoughts:

1. Decide your max before looking at houses and don't increase it because the house is especially nice.


2. Offer under the asking price. Especially now in the current market, but do so anyhow. What have you got to loose?


3. Don't be scared by there being another offer in. There are lots of houses to go around and the chances 50/50 on most offers actually existing.


4. Stay in control. It is you who has the money, so you call the shots.

Also remember - I have never bought a house before (or this one yet) so this is only my thoughts after my vast experience - decide for yourself.

Once your offer is accepted you have a few days to sort out getting your booking deposit to the estate agent. If you have already sorted out a solicitor you may want to do this through them.

At his point you should let your Bank or mortgage adviser know.

Step 5: Start (or continue) looking for a house

After about eight working days our mortgage adviser rang to let us know we had approval for two different amounts - the amount we wanted to borrow, and one quite a bit higher. The higher one was (as far as I can guess) the most we could borrow. We had not asked for this amount at all.
I figure the mortgage adviser was just adding it to encourage us to borrow more - remember, although they are paid by the banks they still get more if you borrow more. I just mention this as it means that as it is in their interest for you to borrow more, they are less likely to give you advice against over borrowing.
Well, we know what we can afford so decided to stick with the lower figure (which is still a hell of a lot of debt to be getting into!). As we got our approval the housing market was showing very few sales, and quite a lot of price drops. We found this out by a mixture of watching houses we liked over a number of months, from general newspaper articles, and also fro the lists of price drops online at http://www.irishpropertywatch.com/
I've put a number of links at the side which may come in handy when searching for a home in Galway (and other parts of Ireland). We tended to be searching through daft most evenings, and also every week we would look at Douglas Newman Good and Sherry Fitz. There were a lot of other sites we looked at but those are the ones we spent the most time on.
If like us you are living a few hundred miles away from where you are buying you will want to pick out a handful of places for each visit. We generally looked at 2 or 3 a day. Any more than that and it just gets confusing.
Once you view a house write some notes, or even better - write as you walk through it. You may think you will remember it all but once you have been around a couple it all gets muddled in your mind.
Also, make a list of things you want to ask -
Water mains or group scheme.
PVC/wood/double glazing windows.
Septic tank and/or sink tank.
Oil or gas cooker, and heating.
Back boiler.
Date built.
Rented or owner occupied.
Attic insulation.
Schools, buses, trains.
Quality of wiring.
Water pressure.
Number of sockets.

You can ask all this afterwards, but it is a good idea to get a lot out of the way as early as possible. It means you can look at the property with that in mind, and not be left wondering about a place only to find it does not suit for some fundamental reason. Decide what are walk away issues and what you will be willing to accept if the price is right.

Then try to book the viewings and fit them all in. Ring a few days, to a week, ahead of going down. Then ring to confirm the day before you go to view. That way you are not going to be left hanging around. We came across a mix of different estate agents. Some were totally not interested and were no help at all. Others were 'not in charge of this account. Just showing it for another girl'. (Disgraceful carry on!). Then you have the really nice ones who will give you lots of info and follow up with answers to your questions. Even these ones you should watch out for - double check everything - it's your life savings on the line and you can't bring a spoken word to court!

Step 4: The waiting game

This is a pain in the bum.

I've never found waiting so hard. All our hopes and dreams were really dependent on the answer to the mortgage application. Are we staying in Dublin? Are we moving to Galway? Will they blame a refusal on my missed credit card payment back in 1992? Will she dump me because of that? Where will I live if we split up over my missed credit card payment causing us to be refused a mortgage? Will I loose my job because I descend into madness with all this infuriating waiting?

Yes, it really got me over thinking! I would suggest you try to get away for a couple of days while waiting for a mortgage to be approved. I don't mean blow all those savings, I just mean something to occupy your mind. We just went down to Galway for a weekend and looked at some areas to give ourselves a bit of a mind map of the area we could refer to later when looking through property listings.

The other small bit of advice is to ask the mortgage advisor or lending facility how long it will be before you hear anything back. If they say 5 working days, make it 7 in your mind because that way you will not be crawling up the walls by lunchtime on day five.

For us it took 5 days to hear back, but about 8 working days to get full details. After 5 the mortgage broker rang to tell us that we had been approved by 2 so it took the sting out of the rest of the wait. You may want to ask yours to do the same (I'd advise it).

Step 3: Decide how you will apply

There are two ways to go about this - you can go to each individual lender and apply yourself in person, or you can get a mortgage broker to do it for you. I am not aware of any other way, but if you are put it as a comment and I will edit this.

We decided to go for a mortgage broker, as it is going to be our first time buying a house so we need all the help and advice we can get. There are a lot out there and we selected Homeloans who seem quite good so far (keep reading and I will keep reporting). They allow you to apply online at - http://www.homeloans.ie/
I have not figured out why they have the online application forms as they called me back and sent out forms where we filled out the same details. I mention this as if you use them you may want to just ring and get the forms rather than fill out the forms twice.

We actually found it quite good as it pointed out the information we needed. Of course you can just look at my previous post and find out!

Things I hadn't known:

• Mortgage brokers are paid by the lenders, not by you
• You get approval, but the lender may still turn you down later if they discover something new about you
• How scared you become about that overdue credit card bill from 10 years ago

Once we had all the right forms filled out and documents gathered we sent them on to the mortgage broker. We sent them by swiftpost which cost a few euros but it would have cost a lot more to replace the documents if they were lost.