Spoke to our mortgage advisor. Our fixed period is coming to an end soon. We told her we’d like to borrow more money to put a single storey extension on our house and do some other home improvements, all of which should be within permitted development. This isn’t a problem in terms of LTV or monthly affordability calculations but as we want to borrow quite a large sum of money she said the building societies want to see builders quotes.
I was always under the impression that it worked like this: find architect, agree drawings, get planning if required, tender the job out to builders, get quotes, hire one. I explained that we aren’t that far along in the process yet. But the mortgage advisor said to get builders to just do some rough quotes so we can get the money secured and then get drawings done later. But surely any quotes we get will be either impossible to do or useless because nobody knows how much an extension that hasn’t been designed yet will cost?!
It all feels very Chicken and egg - can’t get the money without the quote, can’t get the quote without a budget. So how is this supposed to work? What does everybody else do?