Help - mortgage underwriting

[CakesForTea]

We had an AIP from the Halifax to check what we could afford prior putting our house on the market.
We were lucky and sold our house quite quickly and had our offer accepted on the property we want to buy, which was £35k less than our AIP.
We went back to our mortgage broker to pay the survey fee, this was taken from our account within a few days so I presumed it would be booked with the vendor.
10 days later the survey still isn’t booked and I’ve just received a list of questions from the underwriter which don’t make any sense.
Has anyone any experience with this or know if the mortgage might still be approved?
Thank you for reading

When we were first time buyers we had lots of questions from under writers and yes we still got a mortgage

I was a mortgage underwriter. What are the questions - can you post a couple and I might be able to work out what's going on?

Have you altered the amount of your mortgage or not then, OP? Because that would affect the loan-to-value ratio so if you need a smaller amount you might get a better deal.

Can you give us an idea of the questions?

Well done on getting a buyer for your own property, I hope things run smoothly for you.

Thank you for replying.
We already have a mortgage with the Halifax so we were a bit confused.
They wanted to know why we wanted a four bedroom property when there will only be two people living there?!
They also wanted to know how we would fund the garden maintenance as it needs some work?

@ChicCroissant thank you, we applied for a 90% LTV mortgage but could put an extra 5% down if needed

How do they know the garden needs work if they have not done a survey

Apparently they looked on Rightmove! I asked our broker the same question.
They said they will carry out the survey but if they decline our application we would loose the fee or we can wait for a decision prior to them instructing a survey.
The house does need some work but is liveable

They’ll be wondering if you’re planning to have kids which might affect your affordability

Blimey, that makes a good case for getting the best possible photos when you are selling your house

It's the LTV. They're questioning whether it's affordable for you to maintain the property. If you default they want to be sure they can recoup the loan by the sale of the property.

As a rule, the higher the LTV, the higher the risk to the lender (missed payments, higher rate of repossession). They're not going to want to lend on a property that may loose value because of poor maintenance.

If a borrower is looking at 90% and also shows multiple lines of unsecured credit (car loans, credit cards etc) the lender is less likely to feel the risks are worth taking.