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Helen Adams

How to buy your first home – Seeking Mortgage Advice

July 25th, 2007 by Helen Adams

Finding independent mortgage advice is not as hard as it sounds. It is very important though if you want to make the right decision about which loan is right for you.
Good mortgage advice is widely available and is not hard to find.
Since 2004 the giving of personal financial and mortgage advice has been governed …

Lease Option or Rent to Buy?

June 26th, 2007 by Helen Adams

It’s not just social housing tenants who can access right to buy – you can too, by taking out a lease option on a property of your choice.
Based on a US model, a lease option, option to buy or rent to buy scheme could provide the perfect hybrid between renting and buying your first …

How to Buy Your First Home - Shared Appreciation and Shared Equity

May 30th, 2007 by Helen Adams

There are a number of ways of structuring finances or ownership in order to afford a first home. Shared appreciation and shared equity are a relatively new way.
Typically, shared equity or shared appreciation requires a first time buyer to take out a mortgage for between 60 and 75% of the property and then also …

How you can help your grown up children buy their first home

May 9th, 2007 by Helen Adams

It’s a fact that the high property prices in the UK are preventing first time buyers buy their first homes. Those same high prices are often meaning that their parents are often ‘equity rich’. The first time home buyers’ loss is their parents gain.
These days over a third of first time buyers are receiving help …

Buying with friends: Joint Ownership

November 15th, 2006 by Helen Adams

Joint Ownership means clubbing together to share the deposit, mortgage payments and bills. It can be a way onto the property ladder which may mean leapfrogging the first rung or enabling you to live in your favoured area.
· Introduction · What's good about joint ownership? · What are the downsides of joint ownership? · How much can I borrow? …

House Surveys and more…

September 28th, 2006 by Helen Adams

When do you need a survey on your house?
Sometimes the decision to actually buy a home can seem like the easiest decision you will make in the whole house-buying experience. From that point onwards it’s one difficult decision after another. Should I go for a standard mortgage or a Shared Ownership Mortgage? What type of …

Shared Ownership

September 11th, 2006 by Helen Adams

Shared ownership is now a popular way to buy your first home. Because you only buy a share of the property, and pay rent on the rest, the property becomes more affordable. Joint ownership (buying with a friend) and shared ownership can sometimes be combined.
If you need to take out a mortgage to enable you …

How to budget

July 7th, 2006 by Helen Adams

As a first time buyer it can be difficult to know where to begin in trying to work out how much money you have for the deposit and how much to spend on your monthly mortgage repayments. Your monthly outgoings as a homeowner will differ from those of a rent-payer, even if you take out …

Mortgages

June 26th, 2006 by Helen Adams

Next to death and divorce, purchasing a home has been described as one of the most stressful experiences you can undergo. One of the factors contributing to this is the arranging of mortgage finance in advance of finding a property and owning it. Most first time home buyers will have to go through the complex …

The property-buying process

June 22nd, 2006 by Helen Adams

This is the first of a regular series of articles which, I hope, will help first time buyers in the process of property buying.
How much can I borrow?
The first thing first time buyers need to consider when buying a property is how much they can borrow. Using traditional income multiples, this can amount to around …