Costs you Should be Aware of before Buying a House

There are more costs associated with buying your first home than just the 10% deposit. There are many additional fees, duties and taxes that you should be aware of before buying your home. 

 

The first fee you should be aware of is the stamp duty. The stamp duty is not included in your mortgage, so it’s a good idea to save this fee up in addition to your 10% deposit. The stamp duty is calculated at 1% of the selling price on a home or residential property of up to €1m, and 2% of the selling price on homes and residential properties above €1m. This stamp duty may change however, and full details are available on the Revenue.ie website. 

Legal fees are another hidden cost of buying a home that you should look out for. There are a lot of legal aspects that have to be accounted for when officially transferring ownership of the property to you, so you should find a trusted real estate lawyer to take care of this transfer. Legal fees will vary depending on …

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Savings of €635 a year to be made in Mortgage Protection

We were mentioned in an article by Charlie Weston writing in the Independent about mortgage protection. The point was raised (figures supplied by the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission) that savings of up to €635 were possible.

The parts mentioning Irish Mortgage Brokers are what follows next: It’s normally done on a “joint life, first event” basis which means that if two people take out the policy and die simultaneously it only pays out once and the sum is usually engineered to cover only the balance of the loan.

It does this because it’s created as a “decreasing-term” policy, which means the amount it pays out decreases over time, the same as your mortgage does as you pay it.

It has a set term, in line with the mortgage term, according to Karl Deeter of Irish Mortgage Brokers.

So if you take out a mortgage for €250,000 over 25 years then this policy should track it fairly closely, so that if the policy holder or holders die the mortgage is cleared.

Typically, it’s the cheapest type of life …

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Life cover and mortgage arrears

I was asked to help form part of a working group on mortgage arrears which has yet to publish their respective papers on various topics. The one I undertook had to do with mortgage arrears and the issue of life cover on a loan.

While the intention wasn’t to release anything for a few weeks yet, I thought it was pertinent to share this one given some of the days headlines (link to the paper is at the end of the blog).

The area of mortgage protection is a tricky one because some people are paying beyond the necessary amount and others are not, but they equally can’t make the payments so the policy lapses. What happens next is that in some cases a person dies, one example we are working through involves a suicide, and others involve people who become terminally ill.

Deirdre Clune made headlines today when she pointed this out, it’s covered in TheJournal.ie and also in The Examiner. …

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Mortgage Protection explained

Housing loan lenders will usually insist on borrower’s  having a Mortgage Protection assurance policy as a form of collateral security.

A mortgage protection is a life assurance policy that will repay the balance of a loan on death during the loan term. This is to ensure that if a borrower dies then his/her dependants will not be forced out of their home because they are unable to continue making the loan repayments. Mortgage protection cover comes in two forms, a: where the borrower is covered by a Group or Block mortgage protection policy effected by the lender. b: where the borrower has an individual mortgage protection policy and this is assigned to the lender.

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Interesting Life Assurance statistics

This is based on research from the Broker/Life Assurance industry, so put on your filters, but nonetheless it is interesting.

1 in every 2 adults (1.6 million people) have NO Life cover or protection of any kind, but 9 out of 10 people admit to needing it.

1 in 5 people (360,000 families) are considering taking out life cover in the next 12 months, but most think it is dearer than it is. Engagement is the big issue – almost 60% of people say they are simply not being asked. On the last point, it seems we have some more phone calls to make!

🙂

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Sadly another client died, but we did our job right

Working in this business can be tragic at times, the nature of the industry is that we have seen many businesses and individuals financially ruined, but at least they are alive and well, ‘your health is your wealth’ as the saying goes.

Sometimes however, our customers don’t have that either, and people die. We can’t stop that, and we can’t help make it better in any way for the people affected with the exception of the financial implications.

A client of ours passed away earlier in the month, they had two houses and two mortgages. When we were first dealing with them we stressed the importance of protecting your family from the financial impact death brings, it is the greatest wealth destroyer of all (indeed, the greatest destroyer in general).

Our clients took our advice, covering their mortgages in full and in addition to that a further lump sum on the life of the breadwinner. Taking out this cover was a selfless act, the person who has ultimately …

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