New rules mortgage interview: did you survive?

[LemonadeLady]

I am dreading our mortgage interview- I already feel like a criminal after speaking to them on the phone and we have a completely modest lifestyle.
Has anyone had one? How awful was it? 2-3 HOURS they reckon. And they need to know where every penny goes .....
I would love to hear of anyone who has survived it.
Thanks in advance.

We used a mortgage broker and it was a 30 minute chat. Is it a new mortgage you're trying to get?

Thanks lady. We are staying with same lender but going for a different propery. We've had a mortgage with them for years & are actually paying back half of it.
I can only imagine they are being difficult because we have two pre-school children.
What did they ask you and what paperwork did give want to see?

We used a mortgage broker and had no real interveiw, had a chat with broker, went through our income and rough expenditure, and that was it, had to provide various documents like bank statements, but ours weren't brilliant due to an expensive couple of months, originally we only went to see what we could get so weren't too worried. We have just been approved for a fairly large mortgage, all under new rules. Good luck

We also have 2 small children, although we are lucky that we have no childcare costs

I went through quite a lengthy interview when applying for an additional mortgage recently and I didn't feel at all like a criminal. :) More like the subject of one of those consumer surveys because the bank employee was being prompted by computer screen and it took a lot of time to fill in all the boxes. Luckily for me, all my banking is in one place so I didn't need paperwork as they could check the various balances of my accounts. There was even a follow-up phone-call from the bank making sure the employee had asked me all the questions and that I was satisfied with the process

I didn't see it as them being difficult. I saw it as a) wanting to make sure I could afford the extra borrowing and b) protecting themselves against future allegations of mis-selling.

::sigh::

The lender is not trying to be difficult, they have as many hoops to jump through as you. They have to prove to the FCA they have lent responsibly or could be fined or worse. Plus wouldn't you rather you were only lent what you could afford to pay back?

Fwiw, the main bulk of the appointment will be the recommendation, making sure the deal is the right one for you. So you can't come back and complain you've been missold