After a 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 thing to do is inform the bank. We would need to provide them with 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, which 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 the fitness of the property, and 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 recommendations on what needs to be fixed. This will tell us in more detail what we are buying. At this time, we still have not signed the contract and paid the 10% deposit, so we can still pull out of the deal if the reports are not satisfactory. The survey report came to about €650 for us.

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

Mortgage Approval

The next phase for the bank is to provide a “letter of offer” and “offer package” for the solicitor. The valuation and survey reports are some of the documents that we need to submit to the bank. This is also the time that the bank is 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 Malaysian 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. I tried a few times since I kept getting timed out, and partway through the registration I 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 just one page of the Bank Negara report. It was a waste of money, but I did it in the hopes that one of the reports would come through for 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 issued. I tried calling, chatting and going to the branch. I then informed the mortgage provider that all I had was a letter from when I opened the account. We went back and forth with these banks for almost 3 weeks. Finally, I went to the bank where I had the account, talked to a service agent, and the best she could do was write a letter saying I had money in that account. 48 hours later, my letter of offer was released. It was frustrating, but I should have been smarter about explaining the request face to face and trying to get the solution at the branch.

We then have to get mortgage protection insurance. Since we are above 40 years old, I had anticipated problems. In the end, it was a long form to declare our health, and the insurance was approved. Similarly, we got quotes for home insurance (in case we need to rebuild the house). All insurance hinges 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 is some money that needs to be budgeted and paid before getting the keys. We also covered the need for a surveyor and a valuation report. We also need to 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 costs. Stamp duty came 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, and we are asked to refund him the pro-rated amount before the transfer.

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

Mistake

There are a few things we should have done differently if we were to do it again. First, we should have had an agreement with the seller on the handover date. This would set a goal for when we complete the paperwork. The current arrangement (of not having a date) works for us as there’s no rush to get things done. However, the agent keeps bugging us that we are taking too long. It is hard to quantify “long” when there is no target date. That’s probably the program manager in me talking.

The second frustration I have is the need to follow through on the bank statement. Working to get the bank statement for the fixed deposit has been impossible. The person I chatted with asked me to go to the branch. I should have insisted at the branch that they complete the process 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, because 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 letter took so much time and caused so much stress.