12 Things I Wish I’d Known Before Buying My First Home

I bought my first home in South London in 2026 with my partner. It took months from first viewing to exchange. I learned things that nobody told me, things that Reddit only half-explained, and things I only properly understood once I was knee-deep in the process and it was far too late to back out without losing money.

Twelve things I genuinely wish someone had sat me down and explained. Ideally with a strong drink and a sympathetic expression.

1. Your Agreement in Principle is basically a “maybe”

I walked into this thinking my AIP was a done deal. The bank has approved me. I can borrow this much. I started mentally furnishing a place I hadn’t found yet. I had opinions about kitchen tiles. I was deranged.

An AIP involves a soft credit check. It means the lender has glanced at your income and debts and gone “yeah, probably”. The actual underwriting happens after you’ve made an offer and submitted a full application — payslips, bank statements, three months of transactions, an affordability assessment where they essentially audit your entire financial existence. Be prepared to explain every unusual transaction on your bank statements.

People get AIPs and then get rejected at full application. It happens. Don’t plan your life around the AIP number. Don’t buy the sofa yet.

2. Your solicitor can make or break everything

We paid more than the cheapest quote we got — and it was worth every penny. Our solicitor was responsive, helpful, never patronising, and explained things quickly and with care. She flagged issues proactively and responded within 24 hours. We never had to chase. We never felt like just another case number. That made the entire process less stressful than it could have been.

Friends of ours were not so lucky. One went with the cheapest option and spent weeks chasing emails that disappeared into a void. Questions sent on Monday got one-line replies the following Tuesday. Their purchase nearly fell through because a form wasn’t sent to the lender for eleven days. If your solicitor isn’t responding within 48 hours, that’s not “busy” — that’s a red flag. Ask people who’ve bought recently for recommendations. Read reviews. You are paying them. They work for you. Act like it.

3. The asking price is a vibe, not a fact

Estate agents set asking prices based on what they think will generate interest, not what the property is actually worth. Some are priced low to start a bidding war. Others are priced high because the seller watched too many episodes of Homes Under the Hammer and now thinks their damp-ridden flat is worth a fortune because it has a Juliet balcony.

The only way to know what something is actually worth is to check comparable sales.What did similar properties on the same street sell for in the last twelve months? Land Registry data is free and public. Use it. You can often find identical properties nearby that sold for significantly less than the asking price. Twenty minutes on the Land Registry website can save you thousands.

4. Leasehold is more complicated than anyone lets on

If you’re buying a flat in England, there’s a good chance it’s leasehold. You own the right to live there for a set number of years, but someone else owns the building. Ground rent can escalate — I’ve seen leases where it doubles every 25 years. Service charges can be £2,000–£4,000 a year and there’s often very little transparency about where the money goes. You need the freeholder’s permission for major alterations.

And the big one: if the lease drops below 80 years, extending it becomes significantly more expensive because of something called “marriage value”. I know people who bought flats with 72-year leases thinking “that’s ages” and are now looking at £15,000–£20,000 extension costs. If the lease is under 90 years, get a quote for the extension cost and factor it into your offer. Your solicitor should flag this, but don’t assume they will.

5. Get the survey — this is not optional

Your mortgage lender will do a valuation. That’s for their benefit, not yours. It confirms the property is worth what you’re paying so they don’t lend more than they should. A survey actually checks the physical condition: damp, structural cracks, dodgy electrics, roof problems, all the things that could turn your first home into a £40,000 repair bill.

Level 2 (HomeBuyer) is the minimum for most properties. Level 3 (Full Building Survey) for anything pre-1930 or anything that gives you a vague sense of unease. We went with a Level 3 and it was absolutely worth it — the detail you get back is invaluable. Skip the survey and you’re gambling. With someone else’s building. (Not sure about the difference? Here’s our guide to how a property report differs from a survey.)

6. Stamp duty thresholds change and nobody sends you a memo

Stamp duty thresholds move more often than you think. Governments adjust them semi-regularly, sometimes with minimal warning, and temporary reliefs come and go. The amount you owe can change between starting your search and exchanging contracts.

Check the current rates early in your search and budget for stamp duty from day one.Use an online calculator, understand exactly what you’ll owe, and don’t be the person who discovers an unexpected bill two weeks before completion. It’s one of those costs that catches first-time buyers off guard because nobody puts it in front of you until it’s too late.

7. You will spend money before you own anything

This was a genuine shock. Before you get keys, you pay: mortgage arrangement fee (often £999), survey (£300–£700), solicitor (£1,000–£2,000), search fees (£200–£400), and possibly a broker fee. That’s £2,000–£4,000 you spend regardless of whether the purchase goes through.

If the seller pulls out, the chain collapses, or your mortgage gets declined — that money is gone. Completely. We’ve heard from friends who lost over a thousand pounds in fees when their purchase fell through. Budget for the possibility that it goes sideways. It happens more often than you think.

8. “Chain-free” doesn’t mean “problem-free”

We specifically looked for chain-free properties because we’d heard horror stories about chains collapsing. No chain, no domino effect, simple. Except chain-free properties come with their own questions. Some are probate sales where families can’t agree on terms and things drag on for months. Others have legal complications that only emerge once your solicitor starts digging.

Others are chain-free because the seller is a landlord offloading a problem property. Or because it’s been on the market so long everyone else has moved on. Always askwhy it’s chain-free. The answer tells you a lot.

9. Your solicitor’s searches aren’t the full picture

Standard conveyancing searches cover local authority data, water and drainage, and environmental risk at a basic level. They are important. They are also quite limited. They won’t tell you about the pub two doors down that has live music until midnight on Fridays. They won’t mention that the road surface-floods every time it rains hard. They won’t flag that the “Outstanding” primary school on the listing is so oversubscribed you’d need to live inside the school gates to get a place.

There’s a massive amount of useful information that falls outside the scope of what your solicitor checks. That’s part of why we built Viven — to fill in the gaps between what the searches cover and what you actually need to know.

10. Exchange and completion will age you visibly

Exchange is the point of no return. Once you exchange contracts, you’re legally committed. Pull out and you lose your deposit — usually 10% of the purchase price. Completion is when you get the keys. There’s normally a gap of one to four weeks between the two.

During that gap, I aged approximately five years. What if the building burns down? (You need buildings insurance from exchange, by the way — nobody mentioned that until two days before.) What if the seller changes their mind? What if I’ve made a terrible mistake and should move to Portugal instead? My partner banned me from Rightmove during this period because I kept looking at other flats and second-guessing everything. This is normal, apparently. You survive.

11. Moving costs more than you think it will

Everyone we’ve spoken to says the same thing: the first month costs way more than you expect. Removal company, utility setup, post redirection, new furniture for rooms that are mysteriously different dimensions to what you remember from the viewing, the inevitable Screwfix run for things you didn’t know existed but apparently can’t live without. It adds up fast.

Budget £2,000–£5,000 for the transition period on top of the purchase itself and you won’t be blindsided. It’s one of those costs that nobody mentions until after you’ve already stretched your budget to the limit.

12. Nobody is truly on your side

The estate agent works for the seller. They are paid a percentage of the sale price, by the seller. Your mortgage broker earns commission from the lender they place you with. Your solicitor is juggling dozens of cases and yours is not special to them. Your surveyor uses hedged language designed to avoid liability — “further investigation recommended” is surveyor for “this might be a serious problem but I’m not committing to that in writing.”

You are the only person in this transaction who loses sleep over whether you’re making the right decision. That sounds bleak, but it’s actually useful to know. Once you accept it, you stop assuming someone else is doing the due diligence for you. You check the data yourself. You ask harder questions. You stop accepting “it’s fine” as a complete answer.

That’s the mindset we built Viven around. Not to replace any of those professionals — but to make sure you have the information to hold them all to account. Because when it’s your money and your home, “probably fine” should never be good enough.