Could anyone suggest what is the best next step in this scenario?
Sorry it’s really really long.
We went through a broker to get a mortgage agreed for a property in May, had a decision in principle, and then had our offer accepted on the property right at the end of the May. Our broker confirmed in writing that we comfortably fit their affordability, and wrote an email to the estate agent saying we were in a strong position to proceed (90% mortgage which we thought may put off the vendors).
We are looking to borrow 4 times our combined salary which the broker throughout said was fine - we are both in professional jobs, one toddler, excellent credit scores.
There were then issues with payslips (payroll, HMRC to blame, me to blame for not spotting sooner that I was on emergency tax in my new job). The bank was aware of this through June, July and the broker was in touch - they were telling us it may affect how much we could borrow by a few thousand - which is fair enough and was the reason (I thought) that we didn’t have the formal mortgage offer through for the the first couple of months.
I chased at the end of July - and we got an email out of the blue that the bank were only willing to lend an amount significantly less (20% of the property value!) because of a rental we own (can’t sell due to cladding so kept when we moved due to work). Now the brokers know about the rental - they’re the ones who got us a buy to let mortgage back in February when we were initially
property hunting and they reassured us we could definitely get a residential mortgage alongside it.
Since the end of July I have been asking the brokers if we should look at different lenders or products as rates keep going up. Their advice has been to get them correct pay slips, and as both of us have been offered pay rises to get this in writing from our employers, and see if we could raise / borrow money to make up for a shortfall. We have done all of this with lots of back and forth for 6 weeks with encouraging noises but no straight answer as to how much they will actually lend us. There was an encouraging email a few weeks back saying it should all be done if we increase the rent to £x, where £x is the amount it always has been. The brokers also suggested they might prefer we move to a 5 year product, but would hopefully offer us a rate on the market back in May rather than current market rates.
So lots of back and forth, bothering my manager to give the exact right wording on a letter about pay rise, saving every penny and having awkward conversations with family as we don’t know how short we will be and if it’s an amount we can make up.
Anyway - just heard today via the broker that
‘Due to the length of time the current application has been open they are not willing to continue and we will have to resubmit the case with them.
We are querying with them if we can resubmit the application and keep the same product/interest rate we have previously applied for and xxx is researching other lenders to check if yyy are still the best lender for you’
Up until last week the brokers and bank seemed to be in communication, I was chasing and seeing if there was anything else they needed a few times a week. They’d confirmed the mortgage rate was valid fixed until the end of
November, we are aiming to complete the start of November so this worked for us.
Sorry for the really long post - I don’t really know which are the pertinent points but rates have gone up 1% since then which will cost loads. We’ve kept everyone in the loop, been responsive, and asked the brokers back in July when rates were lower if we should look elsewhere.
Things have been a bit complicated that I had a miscarriage about 3 weeks before our offer was accepted, then was pregnant straight away again and had a horrible first trimester so I wasn’t as on the ball as usual - but looking through emails I was in contact with the brokers regularly.
Should we be asking to speak directly with the bank, or looking to see if the brokers missed anything, or is this just one of those things and we should be ready to suck up higher rates? Should I have chased more or pushed the brokers earlier in the process?.