We are remortgaging to finance the second part of our building - thanks to the planning department we had to reverse the order of our building works and do the loft conversion before the extension, which meant that when the surveyor came round to value, he had to value on the basis of a half completed loft conversion. We're not planning on doing second fix in the loft until the end of the extension (as it will be significantly cheaper to do it then) but the lender has now said that they will not release £30k of the remortgage money until the loft is completed and the property is revalued. So problems are:
- I doubt our builder is going to wait for the last thirty grand of his money until the extension is completed and we've had another valuation.
- Even if we pay the extra couple of grand and finish the loft now, the extension is due to start in two weeks and demo starts next week. I suspect they will not be impressed by obvious building works.
- We can't ask the builders to wait as they will not be earning any money while they sit around on their bums waiting for us to get into gear.
This is all based on a really spurious assessment of the value of our house which is £380k, then less £30k (which is the cost of the loft conversion). So £350k. An identical house on our cul de sac sold for £465k last year. Actually it's not identical, our garden is MUCH bigger.
Broker is going back to them to see what we can do, but this is all so much more stressful than buying the house in the first place was. I don't know what to do if they stay firm, try and temporarily raise money else where? The extension is such that it would be almost impossible to do in parts.
Sorry, this is a total whine, I'm not expecting anyone to be able to do anything about it. It's just a bit distressing that this has all happened now, when they've had all the details for WEEKS. And we're supposed to start building in two weeks and the builders have been nagging me about contracts solidly for the last week.