Buying a property can sometimes feel like a long and overwhelming process, especially when purchasing a home for the first time or as a solo buyer. Perhaps unsurprisingly recent research (by Money Box Home-Buying) suggested over three in five home owners felt they were ‘winging it’ when they bought their own home with 61 percent feeling that, due to their lack of knowledge about the process, they were underprepared.
However straightforward the process could prove to be, when you are confronted with an abundance of terms and phrases you do not know or understand it is easy to see how it could start to feel like a lonely undertaking, where second guessing yourself or what you are reading becomes the norm. This appears evident in the study reporting 48 percent of these homebuyers admitted they were left feeling anxious, hoping they’d not missed or misunderstood anything important.
Knowledge is power.
Buying a home is likely to be one of the biggest and most expensive purchases you’ll ever make so its worth spending time researching the process to put your mind at ease and help prepare for circumstances that may arise.
Try to remember you are not alone.
Its likely friends, family, colleagues and acquaintances you bump into in the supermarket have been through the process and can share both their pearls of wisdom (or horror stories) giving context of their own experiences.
If in doubt, ask.
Throughout the process you are working with property professionals, from estate agents and mortgage brokers to surveyors and solicitors, who speak in this jargon day in day out offering an invaluable amount of experience and can be on hand to answer any question.
Expect the unexpected.
There are a number of stages of purchasing a property, many you aren’t typically made aware of as they are handled behind the scenes, and no matter how many times you have been through the process a new issue can arise. How quickly and efficiently you respond to these, for example the surveyor’s findings, can impact the schedule of the process.
