Unfinished extension - can we mortgage?

[Cyrli]

We have had an offer accepted on a house and the vendors have started putting an extension on the back. At the moment there are rsj beams in view and an internal door as a back door. The house has a good bathroom and a kitchen of sorts. It would be possible to live in the house as long we replaced the back door. Would the fact that the vendors have started the extension be a problem when getting a mortgage? Does anybody know if there are some lenders more likely to give us a mortgage?

Not sure, but why are they selling half-way through doing an extension, would be my question......?

You can buy houses that have had work started but it usually means there is lots of room for negotiation on price. You could check with the banks that loan to self-builders or there is a specialist company called Buildstore that offers a mortgage brokering service for self-builders and people taking on major refurbs.

Of course, the main thing is to check that the owners have all the correct permissions (and you like their plans), party wall consent and they have, so far, conformed to building regs and that their builders, if you can agree a fee and think they have done a good job, are willing to keep going on the project.

They may be selling for lots of reasons: need to relocate, overstretched themselves, fallen in love with a house that needs even more work on it. It is strange but not necessarily sinister.

Thank you for your responses.

I should have added that the vendors are divorcing hence selling before finishing the work.

We have our own builders that we would use and are happy with the vendors plans but hope to make amendments if possible. Everything done so far is good and conforms to building regs. We are just worried about the mortgage part of things - since they have started knocking walls down and left the rsj beams exposed. We have a 20% deposit which should help.

Houses used to be considered mortgagable as long as they had a (working) bathroom, toilet and kitchen. AFAIK this is still the case but thre are people on here that know far more than me!

If that's still the case Drucilla we should be ok. Should have tried for a straight forward house. Thank you all. We're really in the dark on this one. x

we bought a house in december last year, three bed semi, but with shell of double storey extension on the side and single storey at the back, shell was water tight but no back door as boiler vented into new extension. no floors, ceilings etc in extension bit. my previous mortgage lender wouldn't lend at all, but lots would and didn't think it was remotely a problem and we went for HSBC in the end, who lent us 90%. We've had to borrow the money to finish it as personal loans as bank won't give us the extra on the mortgage until it's revalued and finished. So we hope to be remortgaging soon. fingers crossed.

mog76 that sounds really promising, I hope we'll be as lucky. Good luck with the remortgage. x

mog76 that sounds really promising, I hope we'll be as lucky. Good luck with the remortgage. x

it all comes down to lending criteria, and it seemed (when we did it at least), that most mortgage companies would lend providing that there was a working bathroom, kitchen and that you could live in it. hope it goes well.