Mortgage conditions - I feel like crying

[DaisyBD]

We've been trying to buy a house since February, and our offer on a victorian semi was accepted in April. Since then, we have been trying to sort out our mortgage, via a broker recommended by (and affiliated to) the EA.

On the recommendation of our broker, we decided to keep our current house, take some of the equity out and get a new let to buy mortgage, then take out a normal residential mortgage for the new house. The let to buy mortgage was sorted out fairly easily, but the residential mortgage has taken for ever - but I am assured that this is normal in the current climate. They wanted all kinds of documentation, including a letter from the lettings agent we are planning to use, stating the projected rental income from the house.

We finally had two mortgage offers issued just over a week ago. Our solicitor has now told us that both these offers are conditional on us not having any other mortgages and are therefore invalid!

I'm so furious with the broker for not having spotted this already - he was the one who suggested doing it this way. Arghhhhhh I am so cross. Has anyone else experienced this - and might it be a simple issue to amend the mortgage offer, or will we have to start again (and potentially wait another three or four months)?

I just feel like crying, this has been one of the worst and most stressful things I have ever done. Meanwhile we have five children crammed into a tiny house and it's very, very hard. Our two teenage boys (one DH's, one mine) have to share a box room. I was so hoping that we'd be moving soon and this would all be over with.

[FunnysInLaJardin]

have you spoken to the broker or the bank? It may be an error. If not you will need to try and persuade them to lift the conditions

[DaisyBD]

The broker isn't in the office today and no-one else will help. I must stay calm and try to think rationally! Perhaps we should talk direct to the bank who has offered us the mortgage...

[Brugmansia]

I'd seek clarification on the condition first with both the solicitor and broker. The solicitor may not have read or interpreted it properly out it could be drafted ambiguously.

From what you have said it could mean you personally cannot have any other mortgages at all on any property. It could just mean that you cannot have any other mortgages on that particular property which the mortgage applies to, which would be less of a problem and is probably pretty standard.

[MissPollysTrolleyed]

If the solicitor is certain he's interpreting the conditions correctly, can he write to the lender and ask them to waive the condition - it may be a standard condition that's been put in in error.

Good luck - hope you get sorted.

[SunnyUpNorth]

Poor you, sounds like things are really dragging.

We had a similar thing earlier this year. We rented out our old property and bought another to move in to. So we did the same as you converting our old mortgage to a buy to let one and then took a new mortgage out on the new house.

Our new provider were also incredibly picky and slow, they too wanted so much paperwork and when we eventually got the offer it also had something like yours relating to not having any other mortgages. I got very cross with our broker and it did turn out to just be a standard clause that hasn't been removed. We still had to go back go the bottom of the administrative queue but I think we got a new corrected version about 3 days later. I had demanded to speak to the area representative of our new provider and really went OTT saying we couldn't hang on to move any longer etc.

Check the offer carefully, I know it shouldn't be your job to, but I think brokers and solicitors so often just scan through things and don't notice mistakes. We had to get the contracts to exchange re done by our vendors solicitor 3 times as they kept making stupid mistakes including putting the wrong address of the house we were buying as they had just reused a previous contract for someone else's house!!!

Good luck.

[delilahbelle]

We did this too - but ported our old mortgage across to the new property when we remortgaged the old on onto a let-to-buy, and got a second mortgage on the new property to cover the difference.

Very very stressful, there was no chain and it still look us a good 4-5months to move.

No advice except to say keep phoning people every day, and fingers crossed!

[DaisyBD]

Thank you all for responding.

It sounds like this is administrative incompetence and potentially fixable. I almost feel sorry for the broker, we were ringing him up to three times a day towards the end of the process, and I bet he thought he was finally rid of us. But I'm going to keep calling him until this is sorted out.

We don't have a chain either delilah, as our vendors are moving into rented accommodation, so I thought this move would be relatively straightforward! How wrong I was. It's good to hear also Sunny that these things can be sorted out.

Just have to work out how to deal with the lack of building regs on the loft conversion now...

[ecuse]

DaisyBD we had a similar problem with building regs and loft conversion in a house we were going to buy a few months ago (that fell through at the last minute for unrelated reasons).

This splits down into two problems:

1. the legal problem - are you going to be enforced against? It took WEEKS of to-ing and fro-ing with my solicitor, surveyor and the vendor for me to find out (through googling!) that there's actually only a 1-year window for building control to come round and ask for proof of compliance (yes! my solicitor confirmed this! Makes me wonder what the bloody hell everyone made all the fuss about!) After 1 year the theoretical possibility remains that they could come round but they'd need to apply to court for an injunction to do so. If the web page I read is correct this has never happened ever for any domestic conversion work (only ever happened once or twice for massive blocks of flats with clear and huge safety problems). So if the conversion has been completed for longer than a year then it's just the very slim (nonexistent?) risk you have to worry about and you can get the vendor to supply you with an indemnity insurance policy which will cover costs if that were to happen. Easy peasy. There's a secondary planning permission problem but loft conversions don't always require permission (unless there's a dormer on the front elevation) - in the case of PP the statute of limitations is 4 years rather than 1.
   
   
2. the was-it-a-bodge-job problem - this is totally dependent on your (and your surveyor's) judgement. Apparently it is REALLY common for small domestic work like wall removal, loft conversion, not to have BR approval so no reason it necessarily would be. If you had a survey I would have a frank verbal chat with the surveyor and ask her/him whether he thinks it's a bodge job or OK. (S)he won't commit it to paper but they should talk about it on the phone with you.
   
   I totally feel your pain with the "simple, chain free" move. We're in the same position. Just had our second house purchase fall through days before exchange. Been trying to move for 15 months now and seemingly back to square 1 again (and £3k lighter).

[DaisyBD]

You poor thing ecuse, that sounds grim. It's so horribly stressful, isn't it, this moving malarkey. I sold my house last year when we got married and I moved in with DH, and I thought the selling was bad enough. Buying seems even worse - it's not a house we're buying, it's a future and a dream.

Anyway, that was very useful information, which I have copied and pasted into an email to DH, as I'm making him do all the phoning and liaising (I can't face it any more). It'll be interesting to see what the solicitors say. At the moment we're waiting for the vendors' solicitors to come back with answers. The current owners have only had the house for two years, and all the building work was done in 2002 by the previous owners, who were builders. I can't understand why the current owners didn't have all this sorted out when they bought it.

[flow4]

Hi Daisy, I'm just wondering what happened with this in the end...? I'm in a similar situation - doing BTL on the house we currently live in to move because teenage boy no longer fits in box room and looking at a house apparently without proper BR for its loft and conservatory, so looking for all the info I can get...

[PigletJohn]

broker recommended by the EA, you say?

these are two people who are strongly committed to making as much commission for themselves as possible (at your expense).

Their advice may not be unbiased

have you approached lenders direct yet?

[flow4]

PigletJohn, I've commented on a thread that's 8 months old, just to see if there's an update... Sorry!