We had great news that our offer was accepted WOOOOOHOOOOO 
of course because the house seller was taking his time thinking about the price and that we didn’t have to sell to buy his property and therefore were chain free we only found out just before we left for a long weekend away.
So it was a mad bit of checking around for an online solicitor to deal with the conveyancing of the purchase. Today was the first day back in the office so I’ve been madly gathering all the information that is needed. For those that haven’t purchased a house before the main things you need are proof of identity and proof of current address, here in the UK you can use your passport or driving licence for ID proof and utility bills in your name for the address proof. Your driving licence can be used for both as it has your current address on it. For ease I will be sending my passport, driving licence and electric bill. I then have to send this all with a cheque for local authority searches, this is essential and there is no way of avoiding it, the solicitor will check for any planning applications in the area and in some areas you have to have a coal mining search….always good to know that your new home isn’t going to disappear into a large hole overnight!
Once that’s done and dusted its just a case of getting the mortgage application forms completed so I’ve fixed a meeting with my financial adviser for tomorrow where I will fill in the various details but as my partner lives the otherside of the country at present I will have to snailmail it across to him for signature.
Hopefully we can get all the paperwork that we have to do completed this week and then it all falls into the hands of the solicitors which is a mixed blessing as it can seem that nothing is happening for weeks…the process needs speeding up in my opinion but I doubt that is going to happen anytime soon! And I really doubt that the new home information packs (HIPS) are going to affect things in a positive way, still I’d love to be proven wrong on this!
