Buying

Registering

When you start your hunt to buy a property in Bexhill, make sure you register with New Foundations, either through our website, or by phoning or visiting our branch in Devonshire Road. As new properties meeting your criteria come on the market, we’ll alert you by post, email and/or telephone. If you are interested in viewing a property, contact us quickly as our properties don’t hang around for long!

Organising finances

Ideally before you start your property hunt, it’s worth making sure you have your finances in place. If you have money in savings or shares, make sure you can access them easily and that there aren’t any fixed timelines to withdrawal. If you need a mortgage, we can recommend a mortgage advisor who will work out with you what figure is likely to be available to you. Don’t forget to budget for any renovations and removals, plus stamp duty and other buying costs.

Viewing

We will always try to be as flexible as possible to fit in with you. We pride ourselves on our attention to detail to answer any queries you’ve got, to help you make the right decision.

Making an offer

Once we’ve found a property for you that you like, discuss with us the offer you would like to make. We will ask you to confirm how you intend to fund the purchase of your property. If you already have a mortgage arranged, we will ask you to provide an agreement in principle (AIP) document and we will require the details of your financial advisor so that we can clarify the time frame that will be involved for processing your application. If you are buying without a mortgage (a ‘cash buyer’) you will also need to provide evidence of finance.

Survey

If you are buying with a mortgage, a valuation of the property will be booked by a surveyor on behalf of the mortgage lender. This is to protect their interests by valuing the property and highlighting any major defects that would negatively affect the security of their loan. You can often pay a little extra to have a full survey done at the same time. Our office can also recommend local surveyors should they be required.

Mortgage offer

Once your mortgage lender has received the survey report and are satisfied the loan amount is realistic given the valuation, they will issue a mortgage offer to your solicitor.

Solicitors

It is a good idea to choose a solicitor before you have found your property, so that once you have a sale agreed things can swing into action straight away. If you need a recommendation of a solicitor we can help. Once an offer has been agreed between you and the seller, we will contact each party’s solicitors to confirm the details of the sale. Offers are not legally binding until contracts have been exchanged. From now until exchange, you will need to be in close communication with your solicitor and our office will also be in regular contact with you and your solicitor, as well as the the sellers and their solicitor, and the solicitor and Estate Agent of any other people in your chain to make sure that your purchase goes through smoothly and on time.

Exchange of contracts

Exchanging contracts is the moment when the sale becomes legally binding on both sides. You can only exchange once you have paid a cleared deposit (usually 10% of the purchase price) to your solicitor’s account. Your solicitor will tell you and us when contracts have been exchanged. The completion date is then set by mutual agreement and is also contractually binding.

Completion

Completion is when your property purchase is finalised – the moment you’ve waited for! Your solicitor and mortgage lender will transfer the outstanding balance to the seller’s solicitor. Your solicitor will contact you and us when the money has cleared into their account and we will then release keys to you, and it will be time to move in!

To take the first steps in your property search please either complete the details in the registration form or contact our office.