Buy your first home before Christmas

One of the advantages of buying a home in Spring can be the eagerness of sellers to finalise a deal before the end of the year so that they can be done and dusted before Christmas. And they might be more open to a lower offer provided you as the buyer can move quickly and settle early.

The start of Spring usually results in a flood of applications, and this week has proven to be no different for me as an adviser.

There are plenty of properties to buy, interest rate are in decline, with the obvious benefit of your mortgage repayments declining, and the possibility of getting approval for a higher home loan amount, because bank assessment rates are declining.

I have set out an indicative timeline for you if you would like to move into your first home before Christmas, and allow enough time to have your new home all set up for when the guests arrive on the big day.

This is leaving it late though…….

 29 November Settlement date/Moving in Day - This will allow three weeks to get all the moving boxes unpacked and settled into your new home for Christmas Day.

15 November Unconditional Date- It takes around 10 working days for documents to be ordered from the bank to be signed in the presence of your solicitor.

1 November Offer Accepted- Your offer has been accepted and you are now working to fill the conditions of the contract being finance, Lim Report Building inspection, or a condition set by your solicitor.

You would more than likely need to have your offer accepted well before the 1st of November, so that you can allow enough time to give notice to your landlord and the vendor to move home as well.

It is not uncommon for there to be 6 weeks from the Unconditional date to the settlement date, which means that in this scenario you would need to have your your offer accepted by the 4th of October, to allow you to go unconditional by the 18th of October and settle on the 29th of November, assuming you have 10 working days to fill the conditions.

Please note: All conditions on a contract are negotiable though, so above scenarios is indicative only, but hopefully gives you something to work towards from a time frame point of view.

Make this Christmas one to remember!