Mortgage offer withdrawn after exchange, can I still complete next week?

[Miffed1233]

Exchanged contracts Thursday for completion next Friday. Buyer below me and I’m buying ex rental which is at top of chain

randomly bank withdraw offer Friday afternoon, 24 hrs after exchanging)saying credit rating changed therefore affordability impacted. Have a call at 9am Saturday. Wtf absolutely nothing I can think of that would have changed and my Experian score is very strong still. Any advice - is there any way I can still complete in 6 days?!

any solicitors or bankers on here?

How stressful! Good luck with the call.

It's more potential debt though, which is what our bank considered.

It may be the new direct debits though.

Exactly, if they think they're right to withdraw they will. OP needs to correct them that nothing has changed.

I hate mortgages for this reason, I remember being so stressed and anxious about this as last minute.com the bank decided they needed or didnt have all my OH's income/bank account information which had been supplied ages ago.

mortgage broker here

your solicitor shouldn’t have exchanged with out drawing down the funds

when a fund request is done the lender does have the right to re credit score. Have you taken out and lending? Spent on a credit card? Ordered things on finance for the new house? Changed you car?

all of these can impact. Depending on the lender and your age you could extend the mortgage to a longer term to make it fit affordability and then over pay each month or Go to a new lender completely.

I think this is likely a mistake, possibly when they've processed the request for funds release they've made a mistake on the system which has sent it back to pre offer stage. It's rare for an offer to be pulled post exchange as people are then liable for costs, and can lose their deposit, so it's clearly not reasonable for a lender to pull an offer post exchange because of an increase in credit limit that they gave! People would stop buying houses if mortgage offers were withdrawn for such minor things after exchange. So if it has been pulled it won't be due to that (and if for some reason it was related to that they need to reinstate it.) So it's either a mistake or some significant change in financial circumstances (CCJ added or something like that) that OP isn't aware of.

DS and DIL were messed about by a lender the mortgage broker got them a new mortgage within the week. And it was a better deal.

I think it is! Presumably OP is a grown adult? They should be able to read the terms and conditions of their mortgage offer and understand that this is possible

I'm surprised the exchange happened without your solicitor drawing down the funds, but maybe that's my misunderstanding of how it's usually done.

id have refused the extra credit & not set up DD's until we'd completed though.

🤞🏼🤞🏼🤞🏼you can get it sorted out this morning.

What you may have is some officious loon in the lenders camp. Who has decided there is some peculiarity or other that means they are pulling on the whole thing. Forgetting that you are taking a lot of the risk. And not looking at the bigger picture.
Find out what it is that is the hold up. And remind them of the late stage you are at and that you are trying to buy a house. That you are putting in a degree of the risk ( assuming you are ). Some judgement needed.

Not read the whole thread, but did your solicitor not request funds prior to exchange? I appreciate this isn’t helpful but I tend not to exchange unless I have confirmation of funds release. Yes it winds up the chain but avoids such situations.

If you have a broker contact them and escalate the matter. Depending on who your lender is the SLA times will vary for dealing with such matters. Ask your solicitor to chase it daily too.

Yes a bank increased my cc limit and I think because I’d recently taken out another cc with another bank, they then wrote to me and said they had new information and were reducing it again

Fund are not requested prior to exchange, it’s prior to completion.

I have three(?) Credit cards, and dont see the limit as a target.

I know if I have a big sodding emergency and need to buy something big (my combind limit is around 50 / 60k) I can.

My balances are all low in household spending and cleared every month

It's probable the offer is still available, but they're doing last minute checks to ensure finances are still stable

I hope someone just pressed an incorrect button or something- not that it should happen!

I’d recently taken out another cc with another bank

This is probably what caused it

I'm sorry you're going through this, it's incredibly stressful. We had something similarish about 17 years ago when we were buying our family home. My husband had some buy to lets with mortgages on, he declared them to the new mortgage lender and they weren't interested in them as the mortgages were covered by rental income.

Then, the day before completion (well after exchange), he got a call from the bank around lunchtime to say they wouldn't release the funds until he had provided them with all the necessary info about the buy to lets. Lukcily he was working from home and able to puase his work so that he could spend several hours going on online banking to screenshot all the necessary financial info and find all the tenancies etc. It was massively stressful for him - luckily for me I was blissfully unaware at work. At 7 months pregnant he didn't want to worry me with it, but I did find it strange when I got home that he was sat drinking a G&T at 5pm, looking like he had been through the wringer that day.

The mortgage lender was satisfied with what he had sent them and the funds were released the next day to allow completion. I suppose this is different as I don't think the offer was fully withdrawn, he was told it would be unless he provided the info they needed, but hopefully your bank will allow you to talk through what they think has changed so that you can reassure them of the affordability and stay on track with the purchase. Good luck!

These will have possibly triggered searches on your credit report (can’t remember if would be soft or hard), but just having some new searches can trigger. Coupled with the increase in your cc limit, it’s possible this is what’s caused the lender to withdraw.

Stupid of the lender though since buildings insurance is usually a condition of a mortgage and needs to be in place from exchange.

I'd get onto Town and Country right now to find another mortgage. You will have all the documents so you might be able to get approval in a week or so.

You can find out what happened with the old mortgage offer on Monday.

My old broker got me a mortgage I didn't want so I went straight to Town and Country and had a mortgage in 4 days.

It's so stressful on top of the ordinary stress of buying a house.

The same thing happened to us several years ago. We were taking out a further mortgage on our house and we were buying back a piece of land which had originally been a part of our property and incorporating it into our garden. Our solicitor had done everything by the book as far as we knew. He requested the funds for completion on the set day only to be told that the offer was withdrawn. In all his years of practice he had never known that happen before. We were in the very fortunate position to be able to borrow the money from my inlaws and complete on time and then took out a further advance from a different lender and repaid the inlaws.

It was horrendous.

I’m so sorry OP, it sounds horrendously stressful. I don’t have anything add but I was thinking, as someone up thread suggested town and country, would us suggesting brokers that we have found exceptional help so you can secure a new deal?

You didn’t mention “affordability” before this. You really need to be clear on here because the experts in this field on here are trying to help you. Perhaps you could copy paste the relevant section from the withdrawal letter.

Based on what other posters have stated, if your credit card limit goes up, that means you’ve less money to spend on a mortgage. You must have been very tight for the mortgage criteria. How much did your credit card limit increase?

K1233 has probably hit the nail on the head...the lower your credit card limit, the better.

It was in her very first post!!