After stressful few months of bidding wars on properties in our last post, we took up the first house that accepted our bid.

Valuation Report and Surveyor

Once the bid is successful, the estate agent will ask for a booking fee. Our booking fee came to €6000. Not sure how they come up with this amount as I don’t think there is a standard amount. When we get the confirmation note from the estate agent, the first think to do is inform the bank. We would need to provide them the address of the property.

The next thing that the bank asked for would be a valuation report and survey report. The bank has a list of approved valuers. The report will tell the bank how much the property is worth mainly for the bank to confirm that it is worth the price that we bid. We have to pay for the valuation report, came to about €150. This was a simple process, all done through emails and phone.

Next we are asked to get a surveyor. The surveyor will visit the property and look at all the elements of the house. They are sometimes called house inspectors in other countries. They check for fitness of the property, any leaks or damages. He will provide a report on what’s wrong with the house, all the systems in the house and finally some recommendation on what needs to be fixed. This will tell us more in details what we are buying. At this time, we still have not signed the contract and paid the 10% deposit, therefore we can still pull out of the deal in case the reports are not satisfactory. Survey report came up to €650 for us.

This is also the time that we have to start engaging a solicitor. Everything now will go through the buyer and seller’s solicitor.

Mortgage Approval

The next phase for the banks is to provide a “letter of offer” and “offer package” for the solicitor. The valuation and survey report are some of the documents that we need to submit to the banks. This is also the time that the banks are asking for updated savings and current account statements.

We also need to provide our accounts and loan statements for our banks in Malaysia. On top of that, we were asked for a Malaysia credit report. Bank Negara Malaysia has a good system (CCRIS) that provides the report for free, but it’s frustrating to use. I probably spent 3 days registering myself into the system. Trying a few times since I get timed out, and middle of the registration found out I needed a google authenticator app. Once I got it registered, it was easy to get the report. Winnie had more problems registering, I was too quick to click and we got locked out after a few tries. We were able to start registration again after 48 hours. The trick is to click buttons and wait for the next page to load.

Anyway, I also paid RM28 for a CTOS report. It gave me a lot of pages of their CTOS assessment and one page of bank negara report. Was a waste of my money but I did it in the hopes that one of the report will come to me.

I also had huge problems getting a statement for my fixed deposit account in Ireland. Apparently since there’s no transaction in a fixed deposit account, a statement cannot be issues. I tried calling, chatting and going to the branch. Then inform the mortgage provider that all I have is a letter when I opened the account. Went back and forth between these banks for almost 3 weeks. Finally went to my bank with the account, talked to the service agent and the best she can do is to write a letter saying I have money in that account. 48 hour later, my letter of offer was released. Frustrating but I should have been smarter in explaining the ask face to face and trying to get the solution at the branch.

We then have to get a mortgage protection insurance. Since we are above 40 years old, I had anticipated problems. At the end, it was a long form to declare our health and insurance was approved. Similarly, we got quotes for home insurance (in case we need to rebuild the house). All insurance hinge on the “start date”, when we will get the keys. This is a date that the solicitor will need to provide after the contract is signed by both parties.

Upfront cost

There are some money that needs to be budgeted and paid before getting the keys. We also covered the need for surveyor and valuation report. We also need provide 10% of the purchase price for the house. The solicitor charges about €3800 for fees and all the associated costs such as searches and registration cost. Stamp duty came up to about €4300. So we need to pay about €8200 to the solicitor to finalize the contract. The current owner of the house will pay the local property tax for the year, we are asked to later refund him the pro-rated amount before the transfer.

We also need to prepare some money to pay for the mortgage protection, that comes to about €68 per month and house insurance which is about €660 a year.

Mistake

Few things that we should have done if we were to do it again. First is to have agreement with the seller on the hand over date. This will set a goal when we will complete the paperwork. The current arrangement (of not having a date) works for us as there’s no rush to get things done. However we are getting bugged by the agent that we are taking too long. It is hard to quantify “long” when there’s no target dates. That’s probably the program manager in me talking.

Second frustration I have is the need to follow through with the bank statement. Working to get the bank statement for the fixed deposit has been impossible. The person I chatted with asked to go to the branch. I should have insisted in the branch that they complete the flow to get the statement the first time. I was silly to let them handle it offline. Also I should have called the bank and checked if the request from the branch was done earlier instead of waiting 10 days (as that’s how long they said I should wait). My principle has been to talk to people face to face to get problems solved, cause it is not easy for them to push you off to the side. I should have stuck to it the first time I went to the bank. Getting that one piece of letter took so much time and causes so much stress.