Lewis and James have found their dream home, but don't know how to go about getting a mortgage or starting the buying process. And they're worried about what their landlord will say about the state of the flat they're currently renting.

Hello. My name’s Lewis. Me and my partner, James, we've been looking for a place of our own now for a couple of years but, what with prices being so high, it's been a bit tough. Anyway, we’ve seen somewhere we really like in a wee village in the Borders. It’s right at the top of our budget but we’ve got our hearts set on it and don’t want to miss out.

We’ve spoken to the guy who owns it – his name is Peter Rivers. He says the house is structurally sound and that there’ll be no need to bother getting a survey or anything. I’m not entirely sure what he means by that and neither is James but we trust him so we’ll just go with the flow. Anyway, the house looks fine – there are certainly no walls falling down or anything – and it’s been painted recently so it’s a blank canvas for us to work on. Just perfect!

So, we’d like to get the ball rolling but we don’t know where to start. I know that solicitors have to get involved but I’m worried that it’ll be really expensive. I’ve also heard that you can get financial advisers to sort out your mortgage but I don’t know where to start with that either.

We also need to get some stuff sorted out with the flat we’re living in at the moment. We’ve noticed that there’s a bit of a damp patch in the ceiling in the kitchen above the cupboards. We think it might be coming from the washing machine in the flat above but the bloke who lives there is really hostile to us so we’re a bit worried about approaching him.

Oh, and the other thing is that our friend Mandy broke one of our chairs the other day. She didn’t mean to break it. We were all sitting down to dinner when the chair gave way. We haven’t told the landlord about it in case he blames us and makes us pay for a new one, and every penny counts right now. I hope he doesn’t try to keep our deposit. I’ve heard some horror stories about landlords doing that and we need that money back to go towards our house.

Anyway, the most important thing for us at the moment is to get things moving with the house. Any ideas on who can help?

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