Your Objectives
Choosing your area
Quality of school and access to rail station/motorways play a very large role in influencing the value of homes in today’s UK. The better the school and/or travel link, the higher the price is sure to be by comparison with areas that lack these facilities.
Look out for up-and-coming areas such as those for which new travel links are planned. There are literally dozens of recent examples of how planned travel links have helped property prices in those areas outpace the rest of the country.
Similarly, up-and-coming schools attract families like bees around a honey pot. A new Head can turn a school around and give families a powerful reason to want to live within the school’s area.
Always check on your chosen School’s Admissions Policy though. Never assume that because a house is located a few yards away from a school, that your children will be able to attend that school.
Education
If schools are important to your family then use this link to check out those that are local to where you might like to live. Schools
Travelling
Often, where you work will heavily influence where you will want to live. For rail timetables follow this link - http://www.nationalrail.co.uk. Also, it’s worth remembering that if you pay your own travel expenses (say travel costs you £20 a week – petrol/maintenance/parking/depreciation etc), then £80 a month would buy quite a bit of extra mortgage. Better to invest £80 a month in property than in a twice-daily journey that takes several hours out of each week!
New or Old?
Whether you buy a new or old home depends largely on personal
choice. Although new homes can often be 5-10% more expensive
than second-hand homes of a similar size, there can be some strong
reasons for buying new. For example:
Some arguments for and against buying a new home:
(a) There should be no question of having to change windows or kitchen or bath equipment for many years.
(b) Central heating and wiring systems etc should be bang up-to-date.
(c) There are no chains involved.
(d) Also modern building regulations require high standards of energy efficiency - so fuel bills should remain comparatively low - forever.
On the negative side, new homes tend now to have very small rooms - squeezing in four bedrooms, for example, where once there would have been three. Their gardens are mostly smaller than those of older homes – land values dictate the need to squeeze as many homes as possible onto a given area of land.
Older Homes on the other hand tend to have: -
(a) Larger Gardens
(b) More Character
(c) Many have larger rooms and higher ceilings
(d) Tend to be more individual – not on estates.
On the negative side, older homes can be draughty, will require more upkeep and many may possibly be more expensive to run.
Leasehold or Freehold?
If you are looking to buy a flat or maisonette, then you will very almost certainly buy a leasehold property. Freehold flats are rare, simply because most lenders won’t advance mortgages for them. The reason for this is it is very hard to force other freeholders to maintain their property and this could cause problems for other flat occupants in the same block.
For example, a flat on the top floor could have a roof that leaks through to your ceiling, causing damage that would be ongoing until the upstairs flat owner repairs the roof. If the tenant upstairs refuses to take action, then you might become engaged in a long legal action - all the time water would be leaking through to your ceiling.
Leases on the other hand usually contain a provision that a leaseholder can force the landlord to take action to, say, mend a leaky roof. The landlord will, of course, recover the cost of doing so from the residents who are responsible for payment under the terms of the lease, or if appropriate from the insurance company with whom the building is covered.
Buildings insurance is another area for which the Landlord is usually responsible. If apartments are each insured with different companies, then who would there be to say that the level of cover is adequate for each property? It would take only one apartment to be underinsured for there to be all kinds of difficulties in the event of fire. A fully insured top floor flat could hardly be built on stilts in the event that the ground floor apartment had inadequate insurance!
When you buy the leasehold interest in a property you are buying a contract to occupy it for a specific length of time. Buy Freehold, and your purchase could be forever - if you live that long. Most leases are for an initial term, usually of 99 years or 125 years but sometimes 999 years. For many shorter-term leases that have been running a while, there may be issues to consider, such as: is there sufficient time left in the lease for a mortgage lender to consider the property suitable security? How long do you intend living there?
If there are fifty years left on a lease and you intend staying a while then you will need to think in terms of who will buy the lease from you with only a short time to go before it expires. If the residents themselves own the Freehold interest (usually through a company of which each would be a director), then the length of the lease becomes much less of an issue because at the end of the term they can simply grant themselves another.
But if the lease is short and there is a third-party landlord, then this could result in the ultimate game of "pass the parcel", but with the objective being to NOT be left owning the flat when the music stops!
Recent legislation makes it possible for groups of residents to combine and form their own company and buy the Freehold interest from the landlord – effectively becoming their own landlord. This is generally a highly desirable thing to do in these circumstances.
When a leasehold property reaches its full term, then in normal circumstances the tenant will become protected tenants – effectively they and up to one dependant will be able to remain at the property, paying a statutory rent to the Landlord, for as long as they wish. Alternatively they may negotiate a new long lease upon paying a premium to the Landlord.
Woking: 01483 773773