Advice sstc no mortgage

[Violetandpurple]

Hi,
we accepted an offer on our property 3+ weeks ago - mortgage in principle, proof of deposit etc. our buyers have yet to recieve their official mortgage offer, they’re saying because one of them is self employed there is much more to it than they originally thought but all is ok.

we have our offer, had an offer accepted on a property and they too have had an offer accepted.

is it normal for it to take this long or should we be asking the estate agents for an update incase we need to go back on the market?

we are happy to wait for them but dont want to be strung along if they arent going to get the offer and risk losing our onward purchase ..

Self employed, yes this is normal. Much hoop jumping for mortgage lenders.

Thank you
how long should we expect it to take?
they have been updating us but obviously we aren’t self employed so was unsure if they’re hoping for something that isn’t going to happen ..

It took us a few weeks and we're not self employed. The affordability swung majorly a few weeks ago when the swap rates went a bit crazy. We could initially borrow £150k more than we can now, in the space of 6 weeks. We then thought we'd have to swap provider rather than port out existing mortgage but luckily it ended up fine.

These are funny times financially, as long as your buyers have appointed a solicitor and are in the process of getting their mortgage offer, I'd be fine with that.

Thank you.
Yes they have solicitor sorted and assure me its all in the process but i just wanted clarification this is normal for self employed. I will stop worrying now.

Just bear in mind banks have become extremely risk adverse in the last two years and everything is taking a longer time than normal. Try not to worry.

(can’t help re: timings, depends on how complex and multi faceted their employment, how quick and risk adverse the lender is)

Ours took 6 weeks and we are both employed full time in banking and wanted to borrow less than half of our AiP!!! I chased and chased and was told their average processing time was 48 working days! This is a normal high street bank!

Ours took a month and we are not self employed or borrowing much of our aip either.

Oh wow we must be lucky then ours only took 5 days!

Ours took about a week and was straightforward - full-time employment, no affordability issues, porting part, same bank etc. Our buyers' took 2 months and they didn't have a mortgage in place until 2 days before completion date (we're in Scotland so this was moving day). I'm getting a mini wave of PTSD just typing this.

Could you still accept viewings?
Always good to have a plan B.

I’m self employed and our mortgage took a while to sort out (6 - 8 weeks?) because the broker / bank wanted documents which took a while for us to create, incl income projections and a different way of doing my accounts. Was all absolutely fine in the end. Am really glad our vendors were patient!

Can easily take a few weeks, all you need is a pernickety lender! The buyers could always give their broker permission to just reassure you that the process is underway? Has the valuation been done?

No valuation yet although our lenders didnt require one for the property we are moving to.

Your lender didn't require a valuation? I've never heard of a lender not valuing a property, even if its just a tick box exercise its still a process within the application, so would still be at that stage, so to speak

I suspect they mean that the lender didn't require a valuation surveyor to physically visit the property, and it was either a desktop or drive-by valuation.

Thats what they said, they dont require one but maybe common sense used were purchasing a 4 bed new build detached and have a 50% deposit so they have no need to value it really as its obviously worth a lot more than what they are lending. Maybe? I dont know.
we are also porting our current mortgage if that makes a difference.