Buying a house

This is my experience buying a house in London.

Freehold vs leasehold

First thing to know is that there's Freehold, and Leasehold. Flats are almost always Leasehold. Leasehold is kind of like buying a flat in Sweden, except that the house is controlled by a faceless corporation that charges whatever service charges they feel like, have a bunch of restrictions, and no real incentive to do a good job.

You'll get a knock on the door from some guy saying he's there to change the smoke detectors, or inspect the pipes, or whatever.

Every Leasehold property has a Freeholder who does not care about you, who is the one who really owns the place.

My experience in Sweden is with renting and owning a flat in a BRF that encompassed just that building, so it was owned and managed by the people who actually live in the building.

You could put it like this: There are three parties involved in owning a flat:

1. You. You paid a lot of money to have exclusive right to your flat, be allowed to drill in walls and do all kinds of things inside your flat that a rental would not allow.

2. The owner of the building.

3. The people who manage the building.

In Sweden (2) is you and your neighbours. This means that for small houses (3) is often also you and your neighbours. Your voice is heard, and you get to vote about who actually manages the building.

For Leaseholds in the UK (2) is "The Freeholder". You rent your right to have your Leasehold. It costs a few thousand to renew that lease for a couple of decades. It's normally kept at around 100 years, but if it goes down below 80 it starts getting really expensive, and you may not be able to get a mortgage. And people won't want to buy it, so this could screw your investment.

Since the Freeholder isn't the collection of Leaseholders or inhabitants, and the Freeholders decide how the building is managed, the only selection criteria for building management is "as cheap as possible for the Freeholder", with no consideration at all for the Leaseholders.

So in short: get a Freehold if you can.

Solicitor

In Sweden the only third party in buying a house is the estate agent. In the UK aside from the estate agent both you and the seller have a solicitor. All communication between buyer and seller goes via these lawyers.

You probably have to chase the solicitor, to make sure they actually do what they're supposed to do. E.g. when I contacted the solicitor asking if some final paperwork is done (after waiting weeks), then coincidentally it "just" arrived, and they'll send it via post today. This is apparently normal, and one cannot just wait and assume the job will be done.

We had to change solicitor. We originally chose the one recommended by the estate agent, but turns out they were not registered in the system for our chosen mortgage provider. And they would not be able to register, either. So we had to switch.

Our first solicitor had a different issue, too. Because of covid this was all done over the phone, email, and post. We were going to send a copy of basically all our IDs and financial information, so we wanted to check up on the lawyer. But we couldn't find them on the SRA website. SRA is where all solicitors are registered. The phone number and company of a person with the name of our solicitor did not match. Turned out to be a screwup at the SRA (Solicitor's Regulatory Authority).

How bidding works

In Sweden everything is an auction, and you can see the highest bid. The UK has auctions, but most are listed for a price. based on that price you can put in an offer, that's higher or lower. That bid is then accepted or not.

Mortgage

Barclays

Their website says really low interest rate, so we tried to go with them. Then later in the process they bump the rate and are no longer the cheapest. So we ghost them.

Three separate people said that we could just drop by to have our IDs checked. So we go there. Nope, we need an appointment. WTF? Appointment for 9am Friday .

Called Barclays. Again after waiting in a queue for 30 minutes a lady routed us into the void after speaking incoherently.

At least we got confirmation that my girlfriend doesn’t need to confirm her ID since she's a prior customer.

The lady on hte phone says she’ll call branch managers and will have them call us, since she can’t access their diaries. Sigh.

Got call from “Dean”, who gave his number and (due to Covid) said for us to call when we're outside, and we get our IDs checked.

Habito, a mortgage broker

We used habito to find the best deal. Turned out to be Platform. Aside from Platform taking 15 working days (because covid) to even look at our application. The delay coused the seller to get worried, despite us keeping them up to date on the status.

Survey

After getting your offer accepted you schedule (and pay for) a survey. This was the most (only) problem-free third party. The guy showed up on time, texted status updates, and quickly prepared a survey document about any problems. The only annoyance is that we're not allowed to share anything about the survey with anyone. This seems like a scam so that if the purchase falls through another buyer will have to do another survey, and potentially pay the same person to go and inspect the same property again.

Exchange and completion

The two most key events are "exchange" and "completion".

"Exchange" is when contracts are signed, and a 10% deposit is paid. If the purchase falls through then that money is gone.

Because after the exchange the buyer is legally obligated to buy the property, the bank requires that from this day a building insurance is taken out (would not apply to flats).

So between exchange and completion you're in a strange situation where you have an insurance on a property you don't yet have access to. "Completion" is when keys are handed off.

10 Years in London

It's interesting how things change when you're not looking. Last time I was in Sweden was in 2018, and it was easy to see the obvious changes, like buildings, and road changes. The big road to Kista was way different, as was Norrtull. And Odenplan is way more connected with its new commuter trains.

But there are less visible changes too, that make it seem less like home and more foreign. A new way to pay for public transport, with weird nonintuitive terms that I'm not used to. Imagine being asked "do you have a travel purse? (reskassa)". Huh? "The standard is 6, do you want that?" Standard what? 6 what? Because I didn't understand the guy actually thought I didn't speak Swedish (even though I'd spoken in complete sentences already).

So I feel like a bit of a foreigner.

It doesn't help that my personal ID number is no longer in the public register (it's still valid, just not in the public version of the register, SPAR), so companies call it "invalid". And my bank (SEB) said they will no longer be able to let me buy investments within their platform. I don't have to sell what I have, but I can't trade or buy anymore.

Some online stores don't accept that my Swish phone number is a UK one (but it does work, I've sent and received money with it), and paying with Bank ID doesn't work if my personal ID number is "invalid".

Several companies where I'm an existing customer don't support me changing my mailing/billing address in their system, so I have to contact support for them to manually change it. At least Binero, SEB, and Loopia. Also Skatteverket requires a letter to be sent. That's right, not everything is digital in Sweden. I think Avanza even needed a "proof of address" such as bank statement. I'd never heard of that in Sweden before.

Avanza will let me continue even after the UK leaves the EU fully (but would not let me create a new account if I didn't already have it), so that's good, at least.