Can I pause my mortgage application?

[JustMakingBananaPancakes]

Ok, long story short.

We're applying for a mortgage. We have a 5% deposit, so we've moved ahead with mortgage application, solicitor, survey etc.

But the mortgage provider has just come back and said because of our credit history, they will only give us a 90 LTV, so now we have to come up with a 10% deposit instead of 5%.

Not the end of the world, but it will take us an extra 6 weeks to save up. So my question is, can I just pause everything? How do I even do that? Because we can't provide the required proof of deposit that our solicitor and lender are waiting for until next month.

We love this house and haven't found anything remotely close. But I don't want our vendor to get twitchy...

In theory, yes you can. In reality, it is unlikely.

It completely depends on your vendor and if they are willing to wait. If it was me, I wouldn't as I would be sceptical of you saving a 5% deposit in 6 weeks. Do your vendors have a property to go to? If not, they may be more flexible with a slight delay.

If you are positive you can save the money, you could potentially manage it by not actually telling your vendor. So continue with the process by doing searches, raising enquiries then the second you have proof of fund send it over.

The other thing you can do is use your stamp duty money to bump up your deposit amount. I only showed proof of funds for deposit not stamp duty (as I actually forgot) and no one ever asked to see it.

Obviously, only do this if you are absolutely positive that you will have all the money in 6 weeks. Don't string them along unnecessarily as it's cruel.

Very impressed that you can save 5% of the value of your house in 6 weeks! Do you mean this? If so, could you borrow it from someone short term? Or, as PP has said, just use the money you have put aside for Stamp etc.

I did this with my lender.

They wanted to see 3 months of consistent maintenance receipts as part of my application, and at that time, I only had 2 months as it was a new breakup. I told them I wanted to pause the application for 4 weeks until I could submit the extra information, which was fine with them.

My purchase has been progressing very slowly due to the unique situation of the vendor, so I didn't tell them what was happening in the background. I received my mortgage offer last week, and my vendor STILL isn't ready to move to the next stage of the process.

Just try stall it