A Word Before You Sign: The Advice We Give Our Own Family

Every so often, a young person comes into the office clutching a mortgage agreement in principle, and we recognise the look. It is the same mixture of excitement and quiet terror on every face, and it has not changed since we started arranging sales for young couples in the 1920s. When it is the son or daughter of a long-standing customer — as it often is — we feel a particular duty. These are, in a sense, our own. Here, then, is what we tell them, in plainer English than the paperwork will ever manage.

Borrow Less Than the Bank Will Lend

The lender will happily tell you the maximum you may borrow. That figure is not advice; it is a ceiling. The payments might be manageable today, but life has a habit of adding costs — a boiler, a baby, a car that fails its MOT. We advise first-time buyers to work backwards from their actual monthly comfort, not forwards from the maximum loan. A slightly smaller house with room to breathe beats a grander one that keeps you awake at night. This, incidentally, is also the surest path to remortgaging well when fixed rates expire.

Pay for the Proper Survey

We know it stings. You have found your deposit, your legal fees, your stamp duty, and now a surveyor wants several hundred more. Pay it anyway. The valuation the lender arranges protects the lender, not you. A full building survey — or at minimum a thorough homebuyers report on anything older than a century or so — has saved more of our customers from heartache than we can count. Damp in a Victorian terrace, subsidence in a 1930s semi, a roof at the end of its life: these are all discoverable before exchange, and all ruinous after.

Buy the Street as Much as the House

A well-kept house on a neglected street will disappoint you; a modest house on a well-loved street will reward you. Walk the road at different hours. Come back on a Saturday evening. Notice whether neighbours stop to talk to each other, whether gardens are tended, whether the corner shop thrives. Streets with good schools nearby, sensible transport links and a bit of green within walking distance hold their value through every downturn we have witnessed — and we have witnessed several.

Expect the Costs Nobody Mentions

Conveyancing, searches, survey, stamp duty, removals, insurance, and then — almost always — something the previous owners took with them or never fixed. Budget a cushion beyond the deposit and you will not be caught out. And do not drain your savings to the last pound for the completion date; an empty account in your first month of ownership is a miserable thing.

A Reassurance Worth Having

Here is the part we say last, and mean most. The market will move. Rates will rise and fall, as they have through every decade since we opened our doors. If you buy a home you can genuinely afford, in a street you genuinely like, with a survey you can trust, the passage of time tends to be kind to you. Nobody in a hundred and thirty years has thanked us for helping them time the market perfectly. Many have thanked us for talking them out of stretching too far.

So take your time, ask the awkward questions, and if you find yourself uncertain, come and sit down. The kettle is usually on, and the advice is free — as it has always been for this town's children, whatever their surname.