Lender asking surveyor to review again

[Undertheappletree23]

Hi
will try and get straight to the point
An issue was uncovered with the house we’re buying just a couple of days before exchange. The solicitor (who has been woefully unhelpful and ridiculously slow) decided the mortgage lender needed to be advised of the issue, sent them a letter and the lender said they needed to get advice from the 3rd party surveyor so at the moment they won’t release the funds and we cannot exchange until we have a response back from the surveyor/valuer and the whole issue is closed

has anyone else ever come across this? If so what was the outcome? How long did it take? We have a very twitchy cash buyer in the chain 😩

Who's your lender? We had a similar issue with Barclays and they were an incompetent shambles - and I'm not being overdramatic.

Their whole process and system is a pile of shit and when I needed an urgent answer about what was going on, the only people you can talk to are contact centre type bods who don't have the specialist knowledge needed. I rang up every day and was told repeatedly that it had been approved, when it hadn't.

After about 2 weeks we gave up and managed to buy without a mortgage. We were only able to do that as DM and me were buying a house together with extra money needed to build an annexe. Our buyer was running out of time on their offer and Barclays couldn't decide whether they needed a second survey or not. We had no confidence in Barclays as they were so inept, they sat on the info for over a week and repeated the desktop survey which they'd already had and wasn't relevant for the new info!!! Honestly, it was painful. My blood pressure is rising just remembering it all haha!

Sorry to be such a doom-merchant. From what I understand from both sets of solicitors, Barclays are particularly bad to deal with. If you're not with them, you might be OK. But I literally rang them every day to try and push it through - whoever you're with, don't sit back or else they'll take their own, sweet time!!

Oh noooo! This sounds awful - what a nightmare @ExhaustedFlamingo
funnily enough we are also selling our house and my MIL’s house to buy somewhere with an annex
We’ve been talking this week about if we should just scrape together all the money we’ve got and beg and borrow to see if we can buy it in cash instead!

our situation sounds horribly similar to yours, the into difference being we are with nationwide we’ve been chasing and calling multiple times a day and the letter that was sent to the surveyor seems to be stuck in a black hole somewhere with no one willing to help us dig it out! 😩😩😩
bureaucratic nonsense at its finest!!

Oh wow, what a coincidence @Undertheappletree23!!

Our sale went through in July and we're just about to start building now as we're extending the annexe and the main house. We decided to say sod it and buy without borrowing, and then sort out the finance afterwards because we were at risk of losing our buyer. Mum's house took ages to sell because it's so niche so we just didn't want to risk it.

Honestly the whole process was a nightmare. Survey in April showed some damp. Stupidly we shared the survey with our solicitor because it came up with some legal questions, not realising that they also act on behalf of the lender! In June the soliicitor suddenly told us they'd have to tell Barclays about the damp.....after sitting on the survey for three months and at the point we were about to exchange!!! So that was bad enough (the solicitor was utterly shit in just about every way you can imagine) but then Barclays being so crap made the whole thing a nightmare. They did a desktop survey originally and couldn't decide if they needed a surveyor to now come out. We weren't worried about the damp because there was a clear cause (broken drainpipe), the damp was very minor and it was only in walls we were planning on knocking down anyway!

I can't emphasise enough how completely shit Barclays were. We just had enough in the end. We cancelled mortgage, bought cash and then organised post-sale borrowing. And then when that was going through - three months after the purchase, it turned out that Barclays had registered a charge on the property anyway and hadn't removed it!!!!! You couldn't make this shit up if you tried 😅

Ooops didn't mean to press enter!

Can you find out who the surveyor is and contact them directly? I completely sympathise with the crappy bureaucracy - we hit the same hurdles. It was so, so stressful and no one at Barclays seemed to particularly care. I really do sympathise.

It depends if you need to borrow to sort out the annexe because I guess finding another deal now might be more expensive for you? We don't regret telling Barclays to stuff it as we ended up going a different route with the borrowing which will work out cheaper. I just wanted the house to complete as I didn't want to lose it!

@ExhaustedFlamingo thank you so much for your insight.
We’ve had SUCH a nightmare and I can’t believe how similar our situation has been to yours
sorry for the delay in my reply it’s just been such a headache
Our lender we’re asking for all sorts of surveys etc so we’ve had to beg and borrow and scrape around and we’ve bought it for cash in the end.
it means we will have no money to do any work to it but… there we go 😂😂😂

If you don’t mind me asking, what route did you go down with the borrowing?

@Undertheappletree23 Apologies, I've only just seen your reply! I thought our situation was as rare as hen's teeth so it's bonkers to find someone else going through almost identical situation!!!

I think with all the uncertainty over interest rates and the future of mortgages, managing to scrape by without one is no bad thing at all. Sorry it's been such a nightmare for you though - I really can empathise.

We've created a bit of a complicated financial set-up to get a good financial deal but it won't work for most people - is the new house just in your MIL's name or your name too? If you're on the deeds, are you over 55 (I'm guessing not?)

@ExhaustedFlamingo I know i can’t believe how similar our experiences have been!
yeah definitely feel like cash was the right move in the end!
So just in mine & my husband’s name and neither of us are over 55