There I am now, only on the radio chatting to the Matt Cooper on Today FM’s ‘The Last Word’ – on their ‘Stretched’ series about the cost of living in Ireland.
This week – Mortgages.

Have a listen to my contribution to the show HERE – spot the non-expert!

Live Radio is a terrifying, but slightly addictive experience – I would totally do it again. Iano, Dermot & Dave…if you’re reading this, my rates are very reasonable 😉

The day has arrived. You’ve done the dance with all the other suitors, seen a lot of frogs, watched people steal away what you felt was rightfully yours (howiya Sarah!), and been stood up and left crying in the rain (ok possibly an unnecessary metaphor, but for the drama it’s staying in).
It’s happened, you’ve finally found ‘the one’ – and you’ve gone SALE AGREED.

It’s at this moment, reality bites. This is real.
Money is going to start leaving your account…and fast.

So I’m going to let you in on a little secret; I had some help in the initiation process for
The First Time Buyer’s Club. I’d consider myself a fairly smart person (what?) but this is handing over the best part of €300k for the next 30 years, not just deciding if you want plain cheese or bacon & cheese fries from Eddie Rockets at 2am you know (always bacon & cheese though, right?) This was big, the biggest in fact. So I brought in the experts.

Now I’m not being paid to say this (my blog is only a few weeks old sure, hardly Pippa O’Connor! hey @pipsypie) so I say this only because it’s true; I could not have got through the last couple of months without the amazing Gerry Hiney and his team over
at Park Financial. I went to them as soon as I had my deposit, and to get the original mortgage offer they submitted all my paperwork to the various banks.
Eh, hello, the dream!
And once I found my little gem of a gaff, Gerry talked me through each of the offers on the table (I’ll do a bit about why I chose Permanent TSB in another post) Anyway, there was not a question Gerry couldn’t answer nor a problem he didn’t offer a solution for.
I won’t gush on about them, but if you’re at the start of your process, give these guys a buzz. Genuine ledgebags.

So first, the holding deposit  – this was 5,000 smackers and needed to be paid to the Auctioneer the day I went sale agreed. I got a bit of a fright when this was asked for, nobody had really mentioned this was the norm, but all was cool. It’s totally refundable and if something, god forbid, does go wrong with the sale, you’ll get it back.
So if you’ve found ‘the one’, stick that €5k down.

Next up, the bank’s valuation. The bank basically needs to know that the house is worth what they’re going to lend you. Makes sense right! You’ll need to pay for this valuation, ‘that’ll be €150, please’. Once all is sound, things can start moving.

Then comes the beast; the structural survey. This is the bad boy that separates the women from the men (see what I did there! #whatwouldBeyoncedo)
Now, before I scare the living shite out of you, the reason I had issues with my survey is down to the fact that I decided nothing other than a 100 year old hipster artisan cottage with original features (yes, that’s how I explain it when people say – ooh what did you buy? I don’t care.) was going to be good enough for me – so yes, I kind of brought it on myself.

Now I’ve watched enough episodes of Location, Property Ladder, Houses Under the jaysus Hammer – all of them, millions of times. I know what a sh*t hole looks like. My new love was not a sh*t hole, but my god did I get a fright when the report came back.
Imagine someone scanning every single inch of your body and telling you exactly what was right and wrong with it, I mean it just hurts. Other than that the only thing I can compare it to, is someone telling you your baby is ugly….over and over again, over 23 pages.

So in the next post I’m going to bring you through the process that happens to your new love, the scrutiny, the fault finding and public shaming (again, it’s staying for the drama).

Grab a blanky ladies and gents, cause sometimes the truth hurts!

So they say it’s rude to talk about money, but when it comes to buying a house there’s no avoiding it. It’s literally all you will think about when you first decided to join ‘The First Time Buyer’s Club’. How much can I borrow? How much should I save?  How much will I get away with saving? How much will I need? And the list goes on…

Quite honestly, there’s been a load of things that I had no idea about and lots of little extras that will eat away at your savings and before you know it, you’ll be like..

So first off; savings. If I could give my 20 year old self some advice it would be to open an account and chuck €50, €20, even €5 in whenever I could. Honestly it’s the best thing anyone can do – I of course did not do this, so I’ll carry on.

Open an account in the Credit Union or Post Office, somewhere where you can’t get to it when you’re drunk on a Friday night and someone suggests an impromptu holiday booking. I chose the Credit Union and now with everything online it’s easy peasy. ‘Well that all sounds very obvious’ I hear you say – yes it is, so get up off your arse today and open an account. Simples.

Decide if there’s stuff you can do without – all those coffees at €3 a pop, that tenth pair of Top Shop jeans (but they’re not the same, these have frayed ankles!!!). Do you actually go to the gym you pay €50 a month for. Really? And holidays…this was the biggest thing I sacrificed. I was a well seasoned traveller doing big €2-3k holidays a year – Nepal, Thailand, US road trips, all put on hold for the years I was saving hard – well places aren’t going anywhere, it can wait. World; I’ll see you soon.

Decide what you can save every month, and just stick to it. If you don’t, you won’t get there, so it’s entirely up to you how long you want to save for – harsh but true! If you’ve any cash left in your current account at the end of the month, lash that in to your savings too. It all adds up.

So what are you saving for? Well theres..
The Deposit
The Stamp Duty
Solicitor Fees
Valuation Fees
Surveyor’s Fees
….and some other stuff you wont have thought about.
Continue reading “It’s all about the money, money, money…” →