House buying process

I visited a couple of houses and am interested in one of them. How do I go about making a bid and what are the next steps following that?
thanks

I Am Non-eu Person And Living In Ireland For Three Years On The Basis Of Work-permit,my Avg.annaul Income Is 20000 And I Want To Buy A House Worth 135000 And I Can Pay Deposit Upto 20000.so I Would Like To Know How To Apply For Loan And Any Chance That Bank Will Pass My Loan.thanks

Presuming you have your finances in place (incl sale agreed on current home if applicable or mortgage approval if FTB) you just need to make a verbal offer to the estate agent. They will pass that onto the vendor who will decide to accept / reject or stall for time to see if another bidder enters the situation. If there are competing bids it can go through a few rounds of back and forth from all parties via the estate agent over a week or so until a bid is accepted.

Then an immediate booking deposit is required by cheque made payable to the estate agent. This may be in the region of €5-10k(?) depending on the house value. You give the estate agent your solicitors details so he can arrange to have the contract sent to them for review and signing if acceptable. Check that any agreed items are included like carpets, blinds, light fittings, etc. You should try and get the estate agent to commit to not showing the house to any other parties at this time and to stop advertising it. Before signing you should get a surveyor to inspect the house and give you a written report to minimise your risk to buying a property with structural issues. Your mortgage provider will also want to get a valuation done to cover themselves. The contract should detail a particular closing day acceptable to both parties. Again this may take a bit of back and forth between parties and it's as well to keep your finger on the pulse of all this so that it stays at the top of the solicitor's work pile! When returning the signed contract a further deposit (of 10% of the house value less whatever was already paid to the estate agent) is payable to the vendor's solicitor. (Make sure your solicitor gets a copy of the contract signed by both parties within a resonable time or there's a risk that they haven't signed it and the whole deal could fall through.)

Then you sort out the rest of your issues like mortgage protection insurance, movers, home insurance, changing over utilities, change of address for bills / correspondance, etc.

There's usually a bit of stress when it comes to the closing with regards to physically getting the balance of the mortgage cheque to all relevant parties but that's a story for another day! Then your solicitor gets the keys and you move in and live happily ever after.

Thanks Redzer - exactly what I was looking for. Need to put this repsonse in the FAQ's area I think.

I've made an offer on a house this morning and followed up with a fax to confirm the offer and to say that the offer is open until the end of the week. Of course, the agent now says there is another higher offer...so the battle begins!

Am I correct in assuming that the deposit is only given after the survey is done?
Thanks

'Booking' deposit to auctioneer is done ASAP when the deal is agreed as it is fully refundable up until the contract is signed by both parties. Until the contract is signed by both parties either of them can walk away and all deposits are refundable.

Survey follows the deposit to the Auctioneer and subject to acceptable report the contract can be signed if you're happy with all the details contained in it. If you're not then try to clarify / renegotiate. If you don't ask you won't get. The 'balance of the 10%' deposit is payable to their solicitor when returning the signed contracts.

I'm half a step ahead of you in this process (price agreed, about to send booking deposit) so welcome to the rollarcoaster! Good luck and ask again if you've any other queries. I've learned a lot from this site and am glad to pass it along / give back.

Thanks Redzer. I was wondering where you went to search for houses. At the moment I'm using the internet only and am wondering is that the best place. Are the websites up to date usually or are you better going to an estate agent in the area you interested in? How have you undertaken your search?

I am also actively house hunting, have been for a while now. To be hones, i use everything available to me. ALL the websites, everyday. i have contacted the estate agents in the areas i am looking for and have requested i am put on their mailing list, I regularly get updated property lists. I have given them my criteria ie. 4 beds, room for a playroom, garden. Ballpark price. 250 to 350. About average for a 4 bed semi in my neck of the woods. They do include some over and above this, but they are usually worth looking at anyway. I call to the local agents every week, and i am in the ones in the city every week. NOTHING escapes my notice. I know every house on the market in my area, when it goes on the market , when it goes sale agreed and when it falls through and when it is sold. I have sale agreed fall through on me twice, hence i am still on the market. I think you have to be a bit obsessive about it to get what you want, cos all the good ones get taken pretty quick. You caould be lucky and strike gold first time out, but i think knowlege is power re the housing market.
HTH

I started looking on the 'myhome.ie' website and ringing around some of the main estate agents in that area to see what they had on their books. I also drove around the area once to see if any particular part of the area had any advantages over other parts and if there was any houses I liked. For my purposes I was most keen to see where the local primary and secondary schools were as I have a young family and I was hoping for something within walking distance of them. After that I looked out for local shops, pub and sports facilities. I then got the local papers and found a few other potential houses that hadn't popped up via the myhome or main estate agents route.
That dried up the options fast as there was only a few possibilities and we checked them all out on one Sat morning with 6 viewings!
We then found the daft.ie website which had several other new possibilities and were about to go on the mailing list for about 10 estate agents when one of the 6 accepted an offer we'd made.
You can get lucky as we did on the first day (but we're not out the gap yet!) or you have to be completely in tune with everthing that comes up in the area via web, local papers, mailing lists and driving around.
Its the start of the selling season again now that the summer is over so there should be more options coming up this month. Keep watching, thats the safe buyers code!

"There's usually a bit of stress when it comes to the closing with regards to physically getting the balance of the mortgage cheque to all relevant parties but that's a story for another day! Then your solicitor gets the keys and you move in and live happily ever after."

I'm supposed to be closing next week. Does that mean I'll get the keys then? Can I start arranging appointments with tradesmen for the following week?

depends if everything is in order

We were supposed to get our keys 1st sept that was the closing date on the contracts we have everything in place mortgage protection, house insurance but there is a problem with the seller the house was signed to him but was never registered in the land registry and the solicitor wont close until that is sorted (because the seller has messed us around)

Anyone any idea how long that could take

I'm only at the start of the buying process again now so maybe somebody who closed recently may be able to offer better advice but from memory when we closed 3 years ago on our current house we got the keys that day and moved straight in.

It was actually more stressfull than that sounds with an 8 month pregnant wife and a closing date that moved 3 times in 2 weeks. There was hassle over the bank getting the mortage protection policy in advance of releasing our cheque, hassle with the buyer getting their cheque physically to our solicitor and then our cheque to their solicitor, hassle over who actually had the keys and when / where they would be available. In the end we ended up relying on the goodwill of the seller who let us unload our furniture van on the closing day despite the cheque fiasco ongoing throughout the day!

But in theory if the sale is closed then the house (and keys!) are yours and you can / should arrange for the tradesmen to call the following week. Now tradesmen turning up when arranged is a whole other saga from the past and has to be (wait for it!) a story for another day!

Cheers. All I needed was to know what should happen, even if things are thrown out a bit