Mortgage application, self employed, covid...

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Has anyone self employed applied for a mortgage recently? Has the process been difficult in terms of covid and proving you're business is safe? What questions have they asked? TIA!

My husband runs his own ltd company but I'm employed. We did our mortgage application in July and he had to provide the standard 2 years of accounts plus say whether the business had claimed any of the Government Covid assistance and what impact he expected Covid to have on his results in the next financial year. Nothing too onerous and I'm not sure how they could have questioned the impact next FY anyway even if that hadn't been the truth! We are existing customers and are with Nationwide if that's relevant?

I’ve heard from friends & Facebook groups that they treat claiming the SEISS similarly to furlough, and will cap your income at 4x what you were able to claim, but I’m not sure if that’s still the case or if you can challenge that.

@SollaSollew did you get the offer quite fast? Did they come back and ask any more questions after you had applied? Thank you

The offer was not quick! It had to go to the underwriters and they took a very long time and they kept missing the dates they kept promising. I think it was about 7 weeks from application to offer all together IIRC. That did include a hone buyers survey though.

We are SE and considered remortgaging to get a better rate but they were not happy about the fact that we had a Covid loan, despite it sitting in our account untouched. Our Accountant has to write to say we were unaffected by Covid , which is true and in fact it has made us better off

@SollaSollew ohhh that's a while! If you don't mind me asking what lender was it?

@SollaSollew sorry you did say nationwide! Ignore previous x

Yep Nationwide.

We are in the process of applying for extra borrowing with Nationwide so we can pay for our house extension (building work has begun). I am self employed and my husband FT employed.

I have had to supply so much evidence to them, letter from my accountant, 3 months bank statements for us both, evidence of SEISS grant, life insurance, house insurance, husbands death in service benefits and pension. I also had to give them my total profit for 19-20 tax year which was a stress because I hadnt completed all my accounts (deadline is not till 31st Jan 21). They also want to carry out a house survey and say it will take about 5 weeks before an offer is made as it is with an underwriter.

Interestingly we got a decision in principle straight away from Halifax for a much greater amount back in October when we put an offer in for a house (which we didn't get, hence extending). It seems Nationwide are particularly forensic at the moment.