Whether you've bought or sold a property before or not, there's lots of lingo to get your head around. Hopefully my explanations of these terms will help you.
A landlord must make sure that a gas safety check is carried out prior to letting out any property. Then it needs to be completed annually and a copy of the record must be given to the tenant. This check must be carried out by an authorised CORGI register engineer.
Gazumping is when a vendor accepts an offer from one person only to later reject it in favour of a higher offer they receive from someone else.
This is a term used when a buyer reduces his offer moment before exchange.
This is the amount of money you have against the amount of a loan. You can be ‘highly geared’ which is owning very little of a property with a very big loan or ‘lowly geared’ which is when you have very little debt against an asset. Also see ‘negative gearing’.
This means that someone has gifted you the deposit on a property. This would normally have been a developer on a new build property you are buying. In practice it is an incentive to encourage you to buy the property as is similar to ‘cashback’ on a mortgage. Don’t be too fooled there is after all no such thing as a free lunch.
Ground rent only applies to leasehold properties and is a sum paid annually to the Freeholder of the property, by the leaseholder. There are normally service charges also attached.
Related: Understanding leasehold and freehold
This is a person who agrees to guarantee that they will repay a loan or debt if you default on the payment of it. A typical example of this is when a parent guarantees the mortgage will be paid on their son/daughter’s first property purchase.
