The process of buying a property, and what you can do to improve it

Getting an offer accepted on a property is always a great moment – but this week we see that rather than being the finish line, it’s actually just the firing of the starter’s pistol.

The process of doing the legals and getting your mortgage arranged can be a lengthy and arduous one, and it’s your job to take control of all the people involved and keep things ticking along. In this episode we go step-by-step through everything you’ll encounter, and provide tips for how to boost your chances of coming through unscathed.

We discuss:

• The preparation you can do with your broker and solicitor in advance
• At what point you’ll have to fork over money
• What your solicitor should be doing behind the scenes (and why you need to check that they are!)
• How to balance patience with keeping things moving
• The critical milestones in the process of getting your mortgage agreed
• What will happen in preparation for exchange

And in case it’s all a bit much to take in, we’ve got a resource of the week to help…

Resource of the week

This week’s resource is an internal RMP document with a flowchart showing what the whole conveyancing process looks like. You can use it as a reference for everything that should be happening with your broker and your solicitor, so you know what to expect and how to keep everything moving.

Grab the document here

News this week

Stop everything: one of our predictions was correct!

This Is Money reports that the biggest recent house price rises have been in Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester and Nottingham – with growth slowing in London.

We’ve been saying for a while that the gap between London and the rest should gradually close, and this seems to suggest that the process is underway.