Currently buying/selling a house? How is it going? READ MOD NOTE POST #1

Hi folks,

We reserved a new build and now have to choose which bank we're going with. Out of the banks that we have AIP with, PTSB and Bank of Ireland have the best rates at the moment. PTSB shades it with the cash back.

Our house won't be ready til September which means rates could change dramatically by then. Any suggestions on who to go with? Would BOI recently announcing deposit rate increases mean that they will likely increase mortgage rates soon?

Finally, how long are PTSB and BOI taking from the time you tell them you've reserved a property to the time of loan of offer/drawdown? Just wondering if the one we choose increases rates dramatically, how long would it take to get things sorted with a different bank?

Thanks.

I think the reason is people in earlier phases get compensated for the fact they will be living on a building site for potentially years. Noise, dirt, general disruption.

If it’s a big development, it could be many many years so would need to be compensated in some way.

Does anyone have any experience on this situation where the folio of the house is registered to a council? It's a probate sale at the closing stage and seems to be a big issue as we might have to pull out as we were supposed to get an unregistered freehold title.

We had this same dilemma, and quite quickly we decided to only look at 2nd hand houses and ignore new builds. A few reasons, some/all of which may be specific to our circumstances:

• New builds tend to be in worse locations. This is certainly true in our town, where all of the more desirable sites were taken years ago and new builds are often more likely to be next to a motorway than a school or train station.
• New builds usually have smaller gardens than comparable 2nd hand houses.
• We placed a premium on the fact that the 2nd hand houses we were looking at were in mature, settled estates. No construction ongoing. No waiting for trees/green areas to mature.
• You know what you are buying into. There is simply no way of knowing how well a new estate will be looked after etc

I would have loved a new A-rated house, but imo they are too expensive relative to similar 2nd hand houses, given the trade-offs above.

Id avoid new estates. Heard too many horror stories of people ending up surrounded by council houses. At least with a more developed area, you can get a feel for the place and your neighbors.

I agree with @herbalplants, new houses are getting smaller and smaller, squeezing out ever inch of available space. Ive seen a few ones go in with 3 story skinny houses, particularly ugly.

The Ber ratings are just another scam to encourage new builds. A Ber B2 will be absolutely fine from an actual energy efficiencey point of view. In fact I know several people with high ber ratings who really struggle in Summer, place can be like an oven.

Another factor. Permeability

We went with a 50yr old place v's new build because it had a number of good permeability (walking and cycling links) to a neighbouring estate and also neighbouring roads so provides good access from different directions.

Also has many benefits already mentioned by other posters. Mature estate, good size front garden with a wall and hedge boundary , driveway for 1 car, back garden with tree providing shade for rear Garden. Nice in this weather. Front garage - real easy to get bikes in and out. 2 bus routes 5 minute walk (one via that permeability link). Large green areas in the estate have mature trees. BER was C1 because Oil fired boiler was upgraded 5/6 years ago + zoned heating and they had pumped walls . Can see us hitting BER of B1/A2 easy enough by putting in NEW windows (current ones about 25/20 yr old I'd say) and throwing panels up on the roof and a heat pump. The house needs modernising work but will do for a few years until we know what we need. Don't see any extension build needed as floor area is sufficient for us - just one/two internal wall changes and larger windows). Short term we thought ya a NEW build would have suited us for next 5yrs when kids are young but then after that we could only see downsides and unknowns as they are generally been built on the edge of the City - all the benefits we currently have now would heavily outweigh in the medium to long term and even I already seen benefits in the short term that had not factored in like a more mixed neighbourhood in terms of age profiles which means don't have a tidal flow of everybody leaving for work in the mornings and have a more neighbourhood/village feel to the place as a result even though we are in the City.

Was it originally a Council house? If so, was it purchased by tenants in the past and folio was never updated following purchase? Happens a lot.

Sold mothers house some years ago and discovered it was sitting on the local Council's Folio of all land they owned in the area, not just her house. Contacted the Council and turned out it was a simple mistake when boundaries were being drawn some years previously as location was going from one Council's area of responsibility to another LA due to boundary extension of LA. The house was never a Council house and had never been sold on open market, handed down to family members for generations, so only discovered in recent times. Easy enough fix, Council agreed it was an error and applied to have it removed from their folio and placed on it's own folio number with Land Registry.

That's helpful thanks, I'm under the assumption that it was never a council home so maybe that makes sense that it was a mistake being on the council folio. Will hopefully hear this week on what the story is.

Sounds exactly like my own current experience. We were 20k over asking and the highest bidder , seller wasn't accepting our bid for a sale, it stalled there for two week as we weren't inclined to bid against ourselves when we were the highest bidder by 4k , I said as much to the EA, then another bidder appeared magically the next day ... I assume your buying in cork based off your name , by any chance is the EA initials JM?

Hey all,

We've finally gone sale agreed 2 weeks ago after a year of searching! We've got our engineer report done, valuation done and our broker says we're at the final sign off stage for the loan offer, we were expecting it to be finalised either yesterday or today. No word yet but fingers crossed for this week.

Just wondering if anyone has experience with the timeline after formal loan offer stage?

Our solicitor is ready to go, seller's solicitor has the deeds ready to go etc. Would we be looking at another 4 or 5 weeks?

Keep the head up. What’s for you won’t pass you. So I keep telling myself anyway haha

Crikey the seller must be in a serious hurry. They must be buying something themselves - always a nightmare

Don’t think so, it’s a landlord who was selling… I didn’t go into detail with the EA

Just wondering what is people experience with taking a mortgage loan for a house that has half of the roof a flat roof? Do banks have no problem with buying a home that has flat roof or should I say part of the roof is completely flat.