Remortgage for conversion/extension - how far in advance?

[elotrolado]

Anyone who has remortaged for building work, how far ahead of the work did you borrow the funds?

We've just booked our loft conversion for April next year (nearest available date). Interest rates are low at the moment and we have an appointment with an advisor on Monday.

Just don't know whether to get funds now in order to secure a good rate and start it paying off, or wait until closer to the time?

What did you do?

Can I ask what you ended up doing elotrolado? We are in a similar position and trying to work out timings.

I applied about 2 months before work started (in Aug) and this gave time for the application to go through allowing for delays (the biggest delays were postal times due to the pandemic, which meant I couldn't go into the branch to sign paperwork, and mailed documents took around 1.5 weeks to reach me and the same going back!)

Once it was approved I was told its valid for 12 months, and not to sign and return the paperwork until the work was ready to begin, as the money would then be released immediately. This was with Santander.

So I would advise applying now, and signing when you are ready if the same thing applies with your deal.

I am not sure if mine was the usual set-up, but the mortgage advisor didn't bat an eyelid when advising me of the best time to sign, so I assume this is standard process.

We got the builder lined up, then applied for planning permission first (had had a preliminary chat with our lender about whether we could borrow the estimated costs), then applied for the money. I think we had the money for about 6 months before the builder started work. That was because we were due to re-mortgage anyway (end of a 2yr fixed deal) and we wanted to know we had the money before the builder actually started work. We took another 2 yr fixed deal - it worked out very well as the build took about 7 or 8 months, we faffed about with getting all the decoration sorted for about 6 months afterwards, and then within a couple of months we could apply to re-mortgage as we were coming to the end of that 2yr fixed deal and we got a much cheaper deal because the value had increased so much we had a much lower LTV.