Fucking surveyors, fucking Nationwide, fucking housebuying. All go fuck yourselves!!!

[CrapBag]

Arrgghhhhhhh. Having major rant.

Had a couple of threads over which house we should buy. One we wanted sold so decision was made. It was next to relatives, a bargain, needs work but nothing major, decent deposit, Nationwide said we could borrow up to 105k (which is more than we are paying for the house anyway) so we weren't worried.

Now its one thing after another!!

Had MIP for 45k, no problem. New stupid fucking mortgage rules came in and they said we can only borrow £34900 which is ridiculous as its not even double DH's wages and that's not taking into account child benefit, child tax credit and DLA (which they allow for mortgage purposes). They have said our out goings are too much to borrow more!! We don't spend any sodding money. Small credit card balances, one of which will be paid off, small child care (£26 a month for lunch times only, they even queried why this was so low), petrol and £30 and £40 a month for me and DH which covers the kids clubs (they said we have to declare this), council tax and buildings insurance, which are essential anyway. Its been a joke tbh as they said we couldn't afford a mortgage of £218 a month (even though we had been paying £425 now, they didn't even ask this).

Anyway as we were lucky enough to have the extra 10k we went ahead and they said the mortgage offer would be out in about a week (now). Now they are asking for more bank statements and a full structural survey! We had a homebuyers report done, booked and paid through Nationwide. They knew it was a steel house but nothing was said.

Now they are saying the house is worthless unless the full structural survey is done! FFS, why couldn't they have said this before!!

We were thinking that we would be completing at the end of this month, now it won't be and we are on holiday next week.

Problem is, before we looked at houses up to 150k because based on what they said we could borrow and our savings, if they are only willing to lend such a small amount we can afford fuck all in a shite area. So I don't know.

We need to move, we are in a tiny 2 bed with 2 children (boy and girl), we have no space here and we have sold. We have a significant deposit, DH has a full time secure job!! We don't smoke, drink, have Sky, eat out (apart from odd carvery), we have cheap caravan holidays and they won't fucking lend a decent amount to us, that we can more than afford!! Its such a joke.

Any help or suggestions or join in rants would be very much appreciated at this time.

[1stMrsF]

It is very annoying the way they don't look at what you are already paying - surely this is a better indication of affordability than any calculation?

Have you looked at your credit report? I wonder whether there is anything else that's causing the problem? It might be worth paying off the credit card balances if you have savings as any debts are subtracted from the amount you can borrow. I am sorry it's all been so stressful :(

[RunningOutOfIdeas]

Run a mile from Nationwide!

They were only prepared to lend us less than half the amount we have been able get by going through a financial advisor. They wasted my time and were really rude to me.

Our last mortgage was with Nationwide and we paid it off in 7 years. Because the computer does not take anything like that into account and there is no human judgement in their system now, it is very much "computer says no".

I no it is a pain and money will have been wasted with Nationwide, but I suggest you go to an independent advisor who can consider the rules for a wide range of lenders and see if they can do better for you.

We have ended up with the mortgage we wanted at a better rate than Nationwide could offer. (Now all I need is for the bloody chain to get moving)

[CrapBag]

Our credit report is fine apparently, they said that wasn't a problem.

Oh and they also said we have to take it over 26 years!! I done a calculation online for us overpaying and we could probably pay it off in less than 8 years with the overpayments, and we'd still be paying a bit less a month than what we are now.

If this house falls through because of the survey and non standard construction thing, then I certainly will be running from Nationwide!
We are going with them as we are current customers, have never had a problem and no one has been able to come anywhere near their rate. Grrrr.

[Petrasmumma]

I liked the tag line. Similar sentiment here.

[ThePerfectNegroni]

Really? I'm shitting it now. We have a current mortgage with them and were planning on taking our new one out with them to port it with us and taking an additional one outfit the difference? Are we bonkers? Will they turn us down? We are applying for 2.5x our combined income and have looked at our budget and can cope with a 4% increase in interest rates. We both have excellent credit scores.

[BumWad]

Don't panic theperfect we are porting ours and boring more all come back fine with nationwide.

Sorry to hear bout your issues OP!

[FreckledLeopard]

I found Nationwide would lend far less than other lenders. Can you get a good broker to find you a better deal?

[CrapBag]

Honestly? I wouldn't count on it!

We have great credit scores, our outgoings are hardly anything that we can't afford. We were even going to overpay our mortgage by £200 a month on top of the £218 it would have been. The mortgage was for 45k and our deposit was 52k and we are previous customers (we have just paid off our previous mortgage). We were taking it out over 25 years to keep payments low in case anything happens and they even queried it and said we could pay it in 10 years instead.

And they turned us down!! DH earns just under 19.5k, plus child benefit, tax credit and DLA a month and they said we can't afford 45k!!

It was a joke and I even said that to them. We know we can more than afford it and afford a rise in rates.

I would keep travel costs to a minimum (we said £140 a month in petrol for 2 cars), nursery was £26 (for the lunch hours, rest is the free 15 hours), credit cards - 1 was going to be paid off, the other a balance of £140 that was being paid off at £50 a month, buildings insurance of £136 a year and council tax at £101 a month and they said this was too much!

Before on the phone when I was trying to find out what we could borrow, they added all our income up (including my ESA at the time, now they are saying they won't take that into account) and said we could borrow 105k so we thought 45k wouldn't be an issue at all. I was pretty gobsmacked.

Sorry to be the bearer of potentially bad news. I would look around elsewhere at rates, just in case.

[Petrasmumma]

Gah, have some .

[peggyundercrackers]

im struggling to see how (they said) you could afford a mortgage of 105k on a salary of less than 20k...

[ShevelKnievel]

Have you spoken to London and Country?

They're free, whole of the market brokers and we've found them to be excellent both times we've used them

[moonegirl]

I second a broker, we had been turned down by two high street banks because of high outgoings with our pensions and childcare and they knew which mortgage lenders didn't take this into account when determining how much they would lend.

[FreckledLeopard]

Peggy - OP only wants to borrow £45,000

[ohtobemeagain]

Another one advocating using a broker. I can let you have my broker's name if you PM me.

[HaveToWearHeels]

Another vote here for a broker, Nationwide are notoriously bad with lending criteria. They wouldn't lend to us at all, our broker told us to not even bother.

[CrapBag]

Does it not have to be a local broker?

It looks like we are going to be pulling out of our purchase which means we will need to go elsewhere and get a bigger mortgage anyway.

Nationwide did originally say we could borrow up to 105k. This was based on DH's wages plus benefits, ESA, DLA, child benefit and child tax credit. They took all of them into account. Now they don't take ESA into account but they do the others but they are still unwilling to lend anywhere twice that income.

Looks like it will be elsewhere for us.

Hope our buyer waits and it can't get sorted until we get back from holiday, we are leaving Monday.

[antimatter]

no, broker can be from anywhere

[lessonsintightropes]

Look, we were in a terrible position when we bought in 2011. I had some bad credit (from 5 years previously), were struggling to meet the 10% deposit and had been turned down by three lenders and thought buying was beyond us - despite high incomes and small debts.

We paid £300 to an all-of-market broker who managed to get us an expensive but doable deal. The same broker is tied in to help us forever now with no fees from us (just from the institutions we are getting mortgages from) and the rates he is able to get us are far better than those we could access independently. We're now about to pay 2.24% on a 2 year fix with Accord on an 80% LTV. They have much better access than you would get independently, and when you look at the fee (payable on completion, or after) the amount of money you save is enormous.

I wouldn't personally go with one the EA recommends - we got ours through personal recommendation, and he is great. I would ask around and get a good broker. Some lenders are behaving terribly right now - a colleague of mine on a fantastic income and with a good credit score got turned down for a vvv expensive HSBC mortgage, and has just got an offer with Accord for tonnes less having gone through one.

But find one you trust!!!

[CrapBag]

I spoke to London and Country and they were very helpful. We can borrow more than Nationwide are willing to lend, but still not a huge amount.

At the moment we are weighing our options as to what we are going to do.

[mrsballack]

Nationwide turn us down for a mortgage of 200k with a combined wage of almost 100k. Both with spotless credit histories and this was before they tightened the rules!! No idea what they want from people.

[peggyundercrackers]

Tbh I can see why they turned you down - if interest rates rise and the benefits system is changed and you loose some of your benefits there is a chance you won't manage the payments and they won't get their money. I think Mortgages should only be calculated on your actual income/salary not including any benefits.

[wuckfit1]

I have a lot of sympathy with the OP, it is either one extreme in the UK or the other. I was turned down recently for a mortgage I could easily afford, but to be fair I was also turned down 18 months ago.

But what really f*s me off is that I am trustworthy enough to pay rent of 850 monthly, and have done so for 5 years now without so much as a blip. Yet I am not financially savvy enough to afford a 670 mortgage with a 30% deposit.

And what makes it worse is that I am renting off a spiv type landlord(as nice as he is) who is an ex bankrupt who seems to still be still buying more property using his present property as security.

I feel trapped by the system which now seems to favour the new breed of landlords. I am really starting to regret not taking out the self cert mortgage I could of easily had back in 2007, where borrowed money was so easy to get hold of if only you told a little fib, something back then I refused to do.. WHAT AN IDIOT IWAS!!

[CrapBag]

Peggy we can easily afford it on DH's wage alone, we have taken into account a change in circumstances for our own peace of mind when deciding what we could afford as we know benefits can easily change.

I am very good with money, live well within means and know exactly what goes in and out. We never have debts, overdrafts or anything as I don't like debt but it counts for nothing.

We (originally) only want to borrow 3 and half times DH's wage, which isn't a huge amount but they will only lend half this which is mad. You couldn't even rent a bedsit on what the mortgage payments would be. We though 45k would be a given as the monthly payments were £218 a month. Regardless of my benefits, we can afford this and more as we were going to pay double to pay it off sooner.

[whataboutbob]

We have just given up on Nationwide after wasting 6 weeks trying to get a 30K loan for a loft extension. It was one thing after another- my husband wanted the loan, our flat was in joint names so they wanted me to sign the flat exclusively over to him?! Obvs I said no, and we went for a joint application. Then, because the flat was bought with a key worker loan of 20% (we've been lucky enough to repay the rest of the mortgage), they wanted the housing assn who provided the loan to sign something called a Deed of Postponement (basically if we were stupid enough to default, Nationwide would force a sale of our flat and get 1st dibs on the money). The housing assn signed. Still no sign of the money and they couldn't tell us when we'd get it. Not Nationwide, not their solicitor, not the mortgage broker. Each one told us to speak to the other.
The loan is about 60% of our yearly combined income, but you'd think we were asking for the moon.
We are now trying with Santander, who so far at least are more positive.

[StressheadMcGee]

They've just turned us down too, even though the numbers well and truly add up, and we've just paid off the mortgage on this house which was with Nationwide too. The most galling thing is that they decided not to lend to us at 5pm the night before the survey was due, so they cancelled the survey without telling anyone.

Bastards. We've already got another MIP and the survey has been rebooked. I'm so tempted to move all the current and savings accounts elsewhere too.