Archive for October, 2010
Pay for a Survey
If you do manage to get on the property market and you have your new home – please make sure you get all the correct surveys done – even if they seem like a lot of money – they could save you an absolute fortune in the long run.
A friend of mine has recently bought a house and skimped on the survey and now regrets it. They have a swimming pool under the house,as they didn’t realise it was built on a spring, and they have squirrels living in the roof. Fortunate for them they have people they know to help out to mend everything and to carry out much of the work. If they had to pay people to do it for them money would certainly be an issue and basically they would be struggling to pay the bills.
Self employed
It’s not only the younger generation who are affected by the price of houses going up and being unable to get a mortgage, it the self employed too.
My friend has recently split up from his wife, given her the majority of the money from the family home so she could set up a new home for herself and their 2 sons.
He is self employed and the business is doing OK. It has struggled a bit this year as most companies have. For the last year he’s rented but now is in a position to be able to make some money by carrying out some property development. On a visit to a mortgage lender he then found out that as he’s self employed they no longer lend to people who have built up their own businesses! So he’s back to square one and will just have to rent for the foreseeable future!
Value of houses drop again
Figures by Nationwide showed that since September, house prices have dropped in value by more than an average annual salary.
Britain’s biggest building society said the average price of a home dropped 0.7 per cent this month, the equivalent of £2,376 in a month which now brings the typical price of a house from £166,757 in September to £164,381 in October.
There are a larger quantity of properties for sale and with no-one to buy them. This goes back to my previous post – First Time buyers cannot afford to get on the property ladder! No-one can afford to buy at the current prices so the value to having to be reduced so homeowners can sell and move on.
First Time Buyers
I started work at 16 and as soon as I received my first pay cheque I opened a savings account. My salary wasn’t very big and I still lived at home – obviously but over the following 10 years I had enough money for a deposit for a house. I was fortunate, I didn’t accumulate any student debts as I didn’t go to University and had parents who let me stay at home until I flew the next to get married – I was still only 26 though.
Theses days young people are stuck in the rut of renting. They have debts from Uni which will take years to pay off and as the recession has hit us hard over the last year or so, Mortgage lenders have upped the First Time Buyer criteria. Meaning that you need a huge deposit to buy a house.
You can’t stay at home for ever, so you have to rent. My parents and their friends alike are of the opinion that this is ‘dead’ money. But is it – it all depends on your own personal circumstances and at least it allows you to move around when you need to.
Looking professional when applying for a business loan
If you’ve got an idea for a new business, you’ll most likely need to attract investors. You could go on Dragons’ Den and try your luck there, but there’s often an element of humiliation in what transpires. It is first and foremost a TV show, after all.
If you fail to attract investment from a third party, you’re left with two other options. You can try and fund your project off your own back, maxing out credit cards and using your overdraft, or you can apply for a business loan.
The latter is often the better approach, but it pays to be prepared. There is no guarantee that the bank will provide you with a loan. They would prefer to see that you were organised and had a plan. When you make your application, look and act the part.
As well as drawing up a comprehensive business plan, you should also make sure you present yourself as a professional individual, deserving of trust. Dress well and have customised business cards printed out to hand over to show that you are serious about what you are trying to do. If you have gone to a bit of trouble, it shows that you are in it for the long haul and this can do wonders for your chances of getting that loan.