As is often said, "buying a home is one of the most important and one of the most expensive purchases we will ever make" It is therefore vital to get accurate, honest and professional advice.

Buying For The First Time
To establish the value of the home you would like to purchase, the first step is to get sound, accurate and independent financial advice. An Independent Financial Adviser will consider your earnings, career prospects and savings (if any) to establish the best possible mortgage and support insurances specific to your circumstances. This information will accurately confirm the maximum value of a property you could purchase and the likely costs.

Trading Up
Again sound financial advice is important in assessing your purchasing power as is an accurate assessment of the value and saleability of your own home. Contact your local office to arrange a Marketing Appraisal. This will assess the likely value of the property in relation to its location, condition and amenities taking into account local market conditions, availability of other similar homes and comparative evidence of past sales. We will also advise on the best way to make sure your home is marketed properly and effectively to establish the maximum market value. Telephone for an appointment or click here to contact us.

Finding A New Home
Modern technology now offers many ways to make house hunting easier and save you time. The internet is an excellent way of viewing homes that are within a certain price range or area that might be of appeal. Our site has been refined and developed to make finding details of suitable homes easier - details of accommodation, photographs, room sizes, selling features and map locations are all available 24 hours a day 365 days per year. We can also send you details of suitable homes by post, by text message or by email - whatever format suits your lifestyle best. Just contact us or register on-line and we will do the rest - just click here.

Viewing A Home
Having found the details of a suitable home the next step is to view it at first hand. Contact us to arrange a suitable and convenient time for an appointment - sometimes this will be with a member of our sales team or it may be with the owner - either way we will try to accommodate your schedule. You only need to register with us once and we will be able to arrange as many appointments as you like - either now or in the future. There will be no need to repeatedly give your details or telephone numbers (unless they change). Once you have seen the property, we will contact you to hear your views. This will help us refine our understanding of the type of home you are looking for and enable us to report your views to the owner for follow up purposes.

Making An Offer
Having found a suitable home simply contact us to put forward an offer which we will convey to the owner. This will be done by telephone initially and followed up by letter. All offers are time and date recorded on our inhouse computer system 'EDGE' which we have developed to make sure that all property information can be given accurately and that the history of any sale can be properly tracked.

Once the owner has been informed, we will report the response and owners instructions to you. Owners will consider the following when deciding on your offer:

	The amount of your offer
	Your situation (First time buyer? Property to sell? Own sale agreed? Timescale to complete the transaction?)
	If you have a mortgage arranged
	If you are in a chain of other sales

Once Your Offer Has Been Accepted
We will instruct the owner's solicitors to send a Contract of Sale to your solicitors for their consideration together with the Title documents. We will confirm these details to the owner and yourself so that everyone involved in the deal is up to date. You should contact your mortgage lender or Financial Adviser at this point to formalise your mortgage application and arrange for a survey to be carried out. If you have any questions along the way, just contact us and we will do all we can to help.

When Is A House Sold?
A Contract of Sale is signed by a purchaser first and then counter signed by the present owner. Within this Contract there may be conditions relating to the purchase eg: a condition of mortgage or survey and undertakings to provide certain legal documents to prove there are no issues that might be likely to effect the value of the property. Only once the Contract has been counter signed and the conditions met, is the house considered SOLD. It is therefore important that anything that can be done to speed up the process is put in place. This will shorten the time between agreeing a sale and a binding Contract being in force and will reduce the chance of disappointments. If you need any assistance with any aspect of the process just telephone us for guidance.

What is stamp duty and what does it cost?
Stamp duty is a Government levy or tax payable by the purchaser of a home and is calculated in relation to the full purchase price. The duty is based on any purchase over £125,000 and is collected by your solicitor when the purchase is complete and then passed on to the Stamp Office. There is no stamp duty on homes below £125,000.
The scale of duty is as follows:

	£125,000+ up to £250,000 = 1% of the total value.
	£250,000+ up to £500,000 = 3% of the total value.
	£500,000+ with no upper limit = 4% of the total value.

Recent changes in legislation mean that any other items included in the purchase price eg: carpets, curtains etc must be included in the total figure and are therefore subject to duty. There is no duty payable on a sale by the owner.