Sellers/Buyers Roll Call 8 and still going

[Fern204]

Hope it's ok to start a new thread.
Bottom of our chain should exchange on Monday and then the top will hopefully exchange a week later. I dont quite understand, something to do with a charge on our buyers house which needs to be released first.
Aiming to complete on 15th July, so hopefully not much longer.
I will never move again, and definitely not in a chain of 10!

@Fennelandlovage and @Karcheer dame here. We are also buying a 2 bed bungalow which we hope to extend into a 4 bed. Many other bungalows on the road have been extended with all applications approved. They have had a lot of objections from the neighbours who feel there isn't enough bungalows.

@notyetthere

We did our DIP four weeks and one day ago

A week after the DIP we did the application

Survey was on Tuesday
We had the mortgage offer same day as the survey.

With nationwide if that's any help?

However now we've ground to a standstill , the EA hasn't even responded to our last email. And the solicitors the same.

@Kelsoooo we are porting with Platform. We can't just leave them as we would end up paying the ERC of about £2.6k and there is no guarantee that the next lender wouldn't take just as long. @SollaSollew is with Nationwide and I think her timescales are looking like yours. We spoke to the EA selling our place and he confirmed that a lot of banks have furloughed staff so there is backlog of applications from many of the buyers/sellers on their books. When I mentioned the name of my bank, he was confident they wouldn't actually take 8-10wks and that it would be sooner.

We were slightly worried about this as the house we are buying came back on the market after it was sold 4 weeks ago due to previous buyers having a delayed mortgage issue. I didn't understand whether they were declined a mortgage or some other issue but i'm wondering whether it was this. We might have to take the gamble and instruct our solicitor to start the process so that by the time mortgage approval comes through, most of the legal leg is done. A risk but one I reckon a lot of have are having to take.

We instructed the solicitor before application, for the same reason.

We only had to pay the first set of fees so we weighed up the cost against possibly delaying things.

Hi @Notyetthere We're 3/12 weeks since we first started and not got the full application past the first underwriter yet. Have just chased them and they've promised end of today or tomorrow at the latest. We'll see if my nerves survive that long.

Once that's done (fingers crossed) they can book in the survey which will take an extra week because we've gone with a Homebuyers report. Then when we get that back from the surveyor it's back to another underwriter for a final review then as long as that goes ok mortgage offer. I can easily see it taking 8 weeks to be honest.

Our buyers have gone with HSBC and they've managed to get theirs turned around in a week including survey so I think it depends on the bank. They're FTBs with a big deposit though, so no porting or high LTV so maybe that's made a difference.

Good luck with your viewings today @Melrose86

Can I join?

Just going to preface this with we're in Dublin, so Irish system is different.

The absolute ballache of the process seems universal though.

We went sale agreed in Feb. Couple of queries 're boundary and title slowed us up. Then the country locked down, but we remained on our full wages, no job losses, good to go. The fly in ointment (We larer found out) was one employer is receiving the government wage support package.

End of April we signed and exchanged contracts, paid deposit, and the bastarding next day the bank pulled out. We were still relatively early into lockdown at that rime, and nobody had a clue what was happening. It was a blanket "no" out of the blue, because of the wage subsidy. They added new clauses to their Ts&Cs overnight, to not issue to anyone on the subsidy, regardless of individual circumstances.

Our broker, the EA and our solicitor hadn't had a case like ours before that (Although, a few since!)

It was without a doubt the most stressful thing ever we have gone through. Luckily our sellers were reasonable and we didn't forfeit our deposit thanks to a clause the solicitor had insisted on.

We had to start again with another bank. All the while freaking our that the new one would also change their rules mid-process. Every time the finance minister came on TV to announce anything, I was sick wondering if mortgages were going to be mentioned.

2 months on from the day we thought we had lost our deposit, house everything, 2nd bank issued funds this week. We hope to get keys in next few days.

I am exhausted. Didn't realise how strained we were.

I have also lost the ability to proof read and spell. 🤷‍♀️

There seems to be a longer turn around time with mortgages - probably related to the rush of applications atm. When i did it four years ago my mortgage and survey were done in a week (with another 8 weeks of lawyers being lazy sods) but my buyers have taken a month just to get the survey done and they're not instructing lawyers til the have the survey back (a bit dangerous considering how long we know they take) but there's no point in me pulling out - by the time i sell to someone else and all the paperwork goes through it will take even longer.

Our buyers are first time buyers. We accepted their offer about 10 days ago. They have a surveyor coming round to complete a home buyers survey. The valuation surveyor isn't instructed yet so I'm assuming they are also in a queue of mortgage applications.

We were hoping to instruct the building survey on our purchase by the same surveyor that does as the valuation surveyor as prices tend to be slightly cheaper if both done at the same time.

Good luck to all of you getting mortgages, it took an age for our buyers mortgage to be approved, think it’s definately taking longer at the moment.
We are exchanged and complete end of the month, I’m in eBay/freecycle hell getting rid of stuff, I know everyone want a big house but if you have one you just hide away all your stuff 🤣 we’ve got so much stuff!!

We aren’t buying again yet so trying to get rid of as much as possible as it’s going into storage.

I’ll be so glad when this is all over, we accept our offer in November last year 🤦‍♀️

Thank you for all the good luck messages. They worked as we have just verbally accepted an offer which was more than I was expecting. I'm over the moon as we had to sell quickly as we've had an offer accepted on a house we love. I will not relax until I am moved in though!

Hi everyone 👋 just joining the party. I’m a first time buyer with a mortgage application to Barclays that went in on Monday. I’ve got a 20% deposit which was a gift. Anyone got any idea that could be likely to take? My mortgage advisor said it would normally be about 2 weeks but atm it’s taking longer...

@Melrose86 CONGRATULATIONS on the offer!

@Itcoldoutthere CONGRATULATIONS on exchanging! I feel like we are miles away from that yet.

I have actually packed my first box. Its got vases and couple of display cups so I thought I wouldn't miss them till we get to the next house, whenever. Dreading clothes as I know I need to get rid of many. Also the loft.

@Melrose86 congratulations!! Exciting and hurray for getting the house you love!!
@Itscoldouthere congrats on exchanging & having a completion date...I feel like that will never happen right now!!

Re mortgage offers/timeframes...our buyers had a DIP before they offered; took 10 days from us accepting their offer to mortgage valuation survey & presumably subsequent offer (but we accepted on a Saturday so nothing could have happened til the monday!) so v quick. We (no DIP) put our mortgage application in last Tuesday, supporting paperwork requested Thursday, was sent off on Friday and we’ve heard nothing since.
Had an email from estate agent’s same progression system thingy earlier saying they’d requested info from our conveyancer as to whether or not draft contracts have been issued - annoying as we posted them Sunday so they should have arrived a good couple of days ago! We’ve also heard sweet FA from our sellers or their solicitor. Have emailed our conveyancer for a status update re paperwork, searches etc etc and to ask if she can give sellers’ solicitor a push to get things moving. Once mortgage offer comes through and we’re fully ready to roll I’m going to start kicking up a fuss about getting things done quickly, but feel like I can’t at the moment while it’s possible that we’ll be the hold up!

**Sale progression thingy, that should read!! I did text our estate agent with a big update for him to feed back to our buyers - hope they don’t feel like they’ve been abandoned! This is such a weird limbo stage.

@Notyetthere god a loft to clear, good luck. We had a barn that was full, it’s not been easy going through everything and getting rid of stuff in lockdown, but I’m slowly getting there.
Got rid of so many clothes, it feels great. Also got rid of 6 spare doors today, why did I still have 6 doors, we did the house up 6 years ago!

I’m going from a 5 bed village house, to a 2 bed modern rental flat, in another country, it’s going to be a massive change.

@AmateurHour we spoke to our mortgage broker on Monday about the mortgage for our new house. We've got an entry date of 6 weeks tomorrow and our broker recommended we don't go with Barclays because he couldn't trust the mortgage offer would be back in enough time for us to complete on the target date. Think the problem is that they're being inconsistent so there was no guarantee on timescales rather than it definitely not being achievable.

Crikey! So if entry within 6 weeks may not be achievable with a Barclays turn around, how many weeks for the mortgage offer could that be, to not get you in there in 6 weeks? 4weeks??

@AmateurHour no idea, sorry he didn't say. Suppose that was the problem, he couldn't really say definitively. If they're a bit unpredictable at the moment it would just have been a waiting game and hoping for the best so didn't want to take the risk 🤷 hoping our existing lender can be quick 🤞

My broker a few weeks ago said there was a predicted industry average of 72 days from submission to mortgage offer at that point.... I think so many people are still WFH, and there’s lots of unknowns due to Covid19, no one really knows how long this will take because circumstances are so out of the ordinary

@Lemonylemony 72 days!! Hopefully they’ve sped up a bit since then though (brought people back off furlough etc).

I’d forgotten but reading all this has made me remember, my mortgage broker recommended that we go with Halifax as apparently they’re still being pretty quick - he said they hadn’t furloughed many people, just moved them around to cover the increased demand in other areas, so they were still operating at pretty normal speed/capacity (bloody hope he was right!). So it must vary a lot from lender to lender.

@FourForYouGlenCoco DP and I have both sold our flats to buy together and both buyers have Halifax mortgages. One got their offer through within three weeks. The other is a bit behind but waiting to see 🤞 we're already with Nationwide - porting existing mortgage and topping up so also hoping for a speedy turnaround. Broker doesn't think it'll be an issue fingers crossed

Looks like our solicitors want to exchange and complete the same day.

That throws up a moral conundrum. We were going to tell everyone when we exchanged that we'd bought a house, but now we may have to tell them sooner. Ah feck.

They reckon six weeks maximum.

@Notyetthere We applied for a mortgage with Santander about mid-March, and got the offer mid-June! The offer came through the same day as the survey though, that must have been the only hold-up.