Mortgaging a mortgage free house

[Cobblersandhogwash]

So we thought we would mortgage about 50% of the value of our house.

It currently has no mortgage on it.

It's taken six weeks so far and still no sign of a mortgage coming through.

Our mortgage broker says it's because we live abroad. We are still British citizens but just resident in another country for now for work.

Is this normal? I'm starting to get slightly irritated as we would like to invest the money.

Can anyone advise as to whether this is normal? We've only been abroad since August.

I'm presuming the mortgage hasn't been approved yet? It is highly likely that you living abroad is the main issue, I worked for a high street lender and we wouldn't have agreed a mortgage in your situation without a significant amount of evidence, including wages going into a UK bank account, permanent employment contracts etc.

Has the mortgage been approved or are you still waiting for an underwriting decision?

Still waiting.

We are paid into bank accounts here in our chosen country.

The house is currently rented out at a rate that will more than cover mortgage repayments.

So do you think we won't be able to get a mortgage then?

Ok so it's a buy to let mortgage. I used to be a buy to let underwriter. There's a few questions I'd have about this and wouldn't be keen to approve it without some really in-depth research. Do you have tenants in place already? Also, why do you want the money? My bank would only offer fundraising for certain things so you might be raising alarm bells if you want to release a large amount of equity to invest. I would need to know exactly what you're going to do with it.

Your mortgage broker should know roughly the criteria of each lender. And if they haven't declined the mortgage then they should have let your broker know what info they need to move things forward.

We want to invest in more buy to let properties with the money.

The broker says he has all the necessary information about our work etc.

Yes have tenants in place already. They've been there four months now.

Thanks so much for your input.

I guess we could just sell it as the rate of return from the tenants isn't that great anyway.