HAGGLING can feel a bit awkward if you’re not used to it – but it was well worth it for first-time buyers Hollie Parsons and Darren Lewis.
Hollie, 24, and Darren, 29, ended up paying £224,995 for their three-bedroom, semi-detached home in Bryncae, Wales.
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Negotiating for freebies proved to be a make or break for the couple’s house buying dreams, after they were forced to pay more than they first expected.
In August 2021, the pair put down a £100 deposit to reserve the plot where the property would be built.
At this point, they were told that the house would be put on the market for £208,000.
But three months later, the pair were informed that the asking price had gone up to £224,995 – an increase of £16,995.
This meant that they’d need to put down a bigger deposit in order to secure their dream home.
Terry Fisher, a property expert at WeBuyAnyHome, said a seller can change their price at any time – right up to exchange.
This differs in Scotland, where the seller is required to put together a formal offer.
Terry said: “There is nothing that the buyer can do if the seller decides to change the price of a property.
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“The buyer may ask for compensation from the seller for the likes of surveys and admin costs, but they are under no obligation to provide you with this.”
Hollie said the couple were given the chance to back out of the sale, but they had their heart set on the property and they would have lost their £100 reservation fee.
Determined to get something from the situation, Hollie managed to bag £3,500 that the couple put towards a kitchen upgrade.
They also both made the most of government schemes – opening Help to Buy Isa accounts and getting a Help to Buy equity loan.
The government scheme gave budding buyers an equity loan and allowed them to put down a deposit of just 5%.
The loan is interest-free for the first five years – but bad news for any budding buyers, the scheme has now closed.
But there are other schemes available that will give you a helping hand up the property ladder.
You can read our guide to all the other schemes that are available to first-time buyers.
Hollie and Darren, who are both civil servants, moved into their dream home in June 2022.
We sat down with Hollie to discuss how they went from being savers to homeowners for The Sun’s My First Home series.
Tell me about your home
It’s a three-bedroom semi-detached new-build house in Bryncae, Wales.
We have a separate living room and a large kitchen-diner which has French doors leading to the back garden.
Upstairs, there are three bedrooms and a family bathroom.
One of the bedrooms is currently being used as an office space.
There’s also an en suite attached to the main bedroom.
How did you decide on location?
We had been looking at properties in Cardiff, where I’m from, but they were way out of our budget.
Because of this, we decided to look for a house between Cardiff and Bridgend – where Darren is from.
We also both work from home so this allowed us to be a bit more flexible with location.
How much was it?
Our house cost £224,995 and we put down a 5% deposit of £11,250.
We took out a mortgage of £168,746 for 35 years with a fixed rate of 4.14% for five years.
Our repayments are £766 a month.
We also applied for a Help to Buy equity loan, which helped us afford our home.
It’s a scheme that helped first-time buyers get on the property ladder with just a 5% deposit, even if they borrow enough for a mortgage.
The government provides a loan of up to 40% of the value of the property if you live in London, otherwise you’ll get 20%.
There’s no interest added to repayments in the first five years.
You have to buy a new-build in order to be eligible for the loan, but that suited me perfectly.
We received a loan of £56,000.
We also both opened Help to Buy Isas in 2019, and added the maximum amount of £200 every month.
By the time we were ready to buy, we had £7,200 between us across our two accounts.
Together, we got a bonus of £1,500.
How did you save for it?
We opened our Help to Buy Isas in 2019 and made sure to put £200 away every month into this account.
This is how we started our saving journey and it proved to be affordable for us.
Between March and October 2020, Darren and I were renting a two-bedroom flat in Bridgend.
At first, we were paying £400 a month with bills included, but the landlord put this up to £650 seven months after we moved in.
We decided this wasn’t affordable for us if we were to continue putting money away towards our first home.
To save cash, we moved in with my mum and paid her £300 a month in rent between us.
As well as putting cash into our Isas, we would also put away any spare cash we had left at the end of the month.
This could vary between £100 and £200.
We did the main bulk of our saving through lockdown, so our usual social lives were put on hold.
We used to go out quite a lot before and get regular takeaways, but we cut this out helping us to save around £200 a month.
Darren and I also both took up side hustles to earn extra cash.
I started working for a company called multi-level marketing company, which I would do in the evening after work.
While Darren would take up labouring jobs alongside his dad at the weekend.
In total, this brought in around £200 extra a month.
How did you afford to furnish it?
We already had quite a lot of furniture left from when we were renting our flat.
This included appliances like a fridge-freezer and a washing machine.
But we ended up selling these items to friends and family after deciding to get integrated appliances in our kitchen.
We were able to afford this after our home-builder gave us £3,500 to put towards any upgrades.
I managed to bag this for us after the asking price of our house increased.
As well as integrated appliances, we were also able to get spotlights and tiles with this cash.
Were there any complications?
Quite early on in the process, we realised that Darren had quite a poor credit score because of previous debt.
He had accumulated around £6,000 in debt across two credit cards and a loan between the ages of 19 and 22.
Although he had paid this debt off in full, the information had stayed on his credit report.
This meant that our mortgage options were limited because we were seen as risky borrowers.
Do you have any advice for other first-time buyers?
It’s always worth saving a little extra to cover any upgrades you might decide to do.
We found it was well worth it because we moved in and the property was already exactly how we wanted it to look.
Here’s how one couple cut £11,000 off their deposit for their £217,000 first home.
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Do you have a money problem that needs sorting? Get in touch by emailing [email protected]
