Keeping Costs Down

When buying a house it is best to keep costs as low as you can, because there are many things that you may not have taken into account that may crop up and need to be paid for. Shop around for the prices for solicitors and mortgages to get the best prices and you won’t be disappointed. If you are looking to keep costs of things for your house down too then you can use websites like freecycle and freegle. These sites are available for people to swap and give away items they no longer require. Get yourself signed up and save some money.

So How Much Should You Charge?

Ok so you have decided that someone is going to rent from the house you have just bought. Depending on whether you are renting the whole house or just a room or section of a house, prices will vary and really need to be judged at your own discretion. There are many websites that give you a guide on how much you charge depending on room size, how many you are sharing with and many other factors. There is also the factor of whether the person renting is a friend or purely a professional agreement. Either way can work but you need to make sure that everything is done legally. This will mean paying tax on the monies you receive from the person renting.

Charging Rent

When you buy a house you may find that you can’t afford to live alone and need to rent out one of your rooms. The advantage of this is that you can charge fees that will cover part of your mortgage repayments and although usage of more electricity and gas will be increased, the charges will be split between more parties. It is often a good idea to live with someone else anyway, and whilst it might not be ideal on some occasions, you have to keep thinking that you are getting a good deal out of it. It is helping you pay off your mortgage whilst being able to live your life.

Conveyancing Fees

If you are about to buy a house you may well be aware of conveyancing fees. When you have had an offer accepted, you’ve seen the Home Information Pack (HIP) and you’re set to go, you will still need to have conveyancing carried out. Conveyancing is the legal process to transfer the ownershp of a property from the seller to the buyer. It is usual for people to hire a solicitor for their conveyancing. If you are buying a property, your solicitor generally works on behalf of your mortgage lender, who usually insists on certain searches before they will release the money for your house. The fees can range from £200 up to £1000 depending on the solicitor.

Pensions

If you are looking to secure your future after you have retired you may worry about what pensions are available to you. If you work for a large company or you work in the public sector such as the NHS or Her Majesty’s services then pensions are pretty much standard, and your employer will often contribute towards the amount. However there are many private pensions out there through independent financial advisors. You can speak face to face with advisors and work out the best plan for you. More often than not you can change your monthly investment and make it more or less to suit you.

Mortgage Buying Fees

There are so many fees to consider when you are arranging a mortgage on a property. Firstly there is the Mortgage arrangement fee. These vary enormously but usually cost £500 – £1,500. In some cases this is non-refundable, even if the house purchase falls through. There is also a valuation fee for a survey. This is to check that the property exists and it offers the lender sufficient security for the loan. This usually costs around £250.

Legal fees cost around a couple of hundred pounds but if you have to pay for your conveyancing, you’re looking at around £500 – £750. Finally there is Stamp duty which won’t be included even if your lender will cover legal fees. The strange thing here is the stamp duty tax rate is set at an absolute rather than marginal level. In simple terms – rather than you paying 4% stamp duty on everything above £250,000 you pay 4% on the whole amount.

Costs of Buying a House

Buying a house involves a mortgage for most people. I have already discussed mortgages and explained that there are two types to consider. There are many financial aspects to take into account when buying  a house and it is important to do a monthly budget to see what you can afford and what your main outgoings will be. For example these things may need to be considered: Council Tax, legal fees, water rates, gas and electricity, the mortgage repayments, extra bills like mobile phone/landline costs, internet rates and much more. It is a large commitment and not just the mortgage repayments need to be taken into consideration.

Mortgage Options

At the moment there are to types of mortgages to choose from with most lenders. You can choose a fixed rate or a variable “tracker” mortgage. The advantage of the fixed rate is that it always remains the same on your repayments. So the interest rate that you pay back to will remain the same over a period of time, usually 2-3 or often 5 year terms.

The tracker mortgage is so called due to the fact it tracks and mimicks the Bank of England rates in which to charge interest. So one month the repayments could be really low and then the next the rates could have risen a lot. Personally I have found that lenders recommend the fixed rate mortgage but it remains to be seen how the Bank of England changes. At the moment we are on an all time low but this will only rise up.

Increased mortgages fail to boost economy

Even though people are buying a lot more houses than half a year ago, the money is not flowing through the economy the way it should. The number of loans rose from 53k to 56k proving that it’s the highest during the six months period, but borrowers are trying to repay the debts as soon as they car therefore net mortgage lending rose only by £900m.

Lending to the biggest British sector: non-finacial private corporations fell by £400m and now it stands very low. Hopefully it will stop falling by the end of the year, because banking really depends on it. In the mean time banks will try to push through to more customers to steadily pull the country from the crisis.

Couriers are taking over for Royal Mail

During the last two weeks UK retailers have started switching to private courier companies because of the Royal Mail employees strike. Most of the companies are afraid of consumers stopping to shop online, because of the delays and uncertainty behind Royal Mail. There is no wonder that RM has the best cost-to-service ratio for certain size of parcels, but the increased affection to RM forced retailers to use couriers even though the cost is higher.

On the other hand private couriers are happy to accept any overflow of work to be done that RM cannot do because of the strike and many of these companies are pretty sure that they have won their new clients for good. Definitely next weeks will prove whether this is true or not.