Now you've entered the real world we'll see how generous you are to spend your cash on things you don't formally have to
The nervous wait to exchange....
- Thread starter noj
- Start date
And what makes you think renter's don't live in the real world? I'd argue it's infinitely more 'real' what with the terrible rights they have in this country (i.e. potential to be made homeless with 2 months notice) and people like yourself looking down on them with stupid comments like thatNow you've entered the real world we'll see how generous you are to spend your cash on things you don't formally have to
You've had your little dig now, how about you stay on topic.
Rented for 8 years pal. I'm not looking down on renters, I'm looking down on nut cases who suggest tenants should pick up the slack for poor maintenance.And what makes you think renter's don't live in the real world? I'd argue it's infinitely more 'real' what with the terrible rights they have in this country (i.e. potential to be made homeless with 2 months notice) and people like yourself looking down on them with stupid comments like that
You've had your little dig now, how about you stay on topic.
Soldato
Maybe sold the whitegoods. Or moved them to another rental.
Submitted my first mortgage application through a mortgage advisor (self employed, so helpful and very positive everything will be fine) valuation came back at purchase price. Been nearly 2 weeks now, the amount of sleep I'm losing and worry is unbearable 
Soldato
Amazing, formal mortgage offer came through today. Only did the advised session with recommendation on Thursday. The valuation was somehow booked in and completed on Friday, yesterday they realised they'd forgotten to ask for payslips for bonuses so we got them over and the formal offer out the door lunchtime today. Very impressed!
Feels like end of June really might be achievable....
Feels like end of June really might be achievable....
Associate
- Joined
- 15 Jun 2009
- Posts
- 2,494
Trying to work out what is the best option here in terms of existing loans and finance agreements and applying for a mortgage.
The main one is an interest free agreement with PayPal for about £1k. Obviously I'd prefer to just keep this going as it's not costing me anything but just wondering if it's going to massively affect a mortgage application and should just pay it off?
The main one is an interest free agreement with PayPal for about £1k. Obviously I'd prefer to just keep this going as it's not costing me anything but just wondering if it's going to massively affect a mortgage application and should just pay it off?
It is trivial in the grand scheme of things and shouldn't cause an issue. Expect to get a note from your Mortgage provider though that as a term of the offer you need to pay it off entirely (but they don't ever check, nor do they ask - it is to tick a safeguarding box).
Small chain here, our buyers have sold to a FTB and we have bought from a couple moving into an empty house. We instructed our solicitors on the 12th March so it's been a short while so far. We received the searches pack this morning and confirmation that it should be too long now, the solicitor is just waiting on some more details from the sellers side.
Shouldnt matter unless you are on the edge of affordability. These days they basically look at money in and money out and if you have enough or not.
Soldato
Being driven a bit up the wall by our lender's valuation.
It's a part timber frame property, and there is one small area where there's a little bit of timber decay, and they've flagged that as a major issue and refused to put a valuation on the house until we have a 'specialist timber and damp contractor' look at it, diagnose and estimate remedial costs. Fact is this is certainly not an actual structural issue (my Father in Law has renovated a black and white recently including replacing an entire wall and said there's no way it's more than a superficial issue), and our LTV will be around 40%. Maddening.
Now we've got a bona fide building surveyor who will be going in a few weeks and fully assessing the whole house, including a thorough review of all timbers and damp as standard. I am very loathe to send in a contractor for timber and damp who is likely to point out as many issues as possible and give me a long list of expensive, probably unnecessary and potentially even damaging treatments (if you know anything about damp-proofing companies and old houses you'll know exactly what I mean), which I then have to share with my lender. I would much rather my building surveyor who knows how old houses work and doesn't stand to benefit from hamming up the issue, to cover this as he would normally, and have that satisfy the lender.
Problem is, the lender tells me they are wholly reliant on their valuer, who has asked for a contractor specifcally. They can't call the valuer, or give me a phone number, and can only communicate with them via a formal email request. So I asked them to request that the valuer changes their request to say that we should ensure timber and damp is fully covered during a level 3 RICS approved building survey, and I included some of my rationale above.
In the meantime I did contact some timber and damp specialists. I called one to basically sound him out, and I think I offended him a bit by saying that I was worried about getting back a report which overdiagnosed. I suppose in hindsight that's the sort of response I wanted. I still really don't want to pay 400 quid for something that will be assessed in my building survey though.
The lender's valuer's then response came:
Notes:After a review of the information provided and my further research, I have concluded that
this level of information is outside the scope of an MV, as per the valuation report advise - There is evidence
of dampness and timbers in contact may be defective. You should instruct a specialist damp and timber
treatment contractor to investigate the full extent.
Which reads to me that they didn't properly read my request and just doubled down, giving no rationale for insisting on a contractor rather than surveyor, and all they really said was that it's outside their scope and they don't know what they are on about. So I've had to request the lender to send a more succinct and pointed version of my original request.
Of course this takes days back and forth. Just having a rant about how a mortgage valuer somehow holds the keys to everything, yet is uncontactable and incompetent at the same time.
This isn't necessarily on our critical path yet as the solicitor has plenty to get on with in the meantime, but I'm starting to wonder if I should just got ahead with the T+D contractor survey
It's a part timber frame property, and there is one small area where there's a little bit of timber decay, and they've flagged that as a major issue and refused to put a valuation on the house until we have a 'specialist timber and damp contractor' look at it, diagnose and estimate remedial costs. Fact is this is certainly not an actual structural issue (my Father in Law has renovated a black and white recently including replacing an entire wall and said there's no way it's more than a superficial issue), and our LTV will be around 40%. Maddening.
Now we've got a bona fide building surveyor who will be going in a few weeks and fully assessing the whole house, including a thorough review of all timbers and damp as standard. I am very loathe to send in a contractor for timber and damp who is likely to point out as many issues as possible and give me a long list of expensive, probably unnecessary and potentially even damaging treatments (if you know anything about damp-proofing companies and old houses you'll know exactly what I mean), which I then have to share with my lender. I would much rather my building surveyor who knows how old houses work and doesn't stand to benefit from hamming up the issue, to cover this as he would normally, and have that satisfy the lender.
Problem is, the lender tells me they are wholly reliant on their valuer, who has asked for a contractor specifcally. They can't call the valuer, or give me a phone number, and can only communicate with them via a formal email request. So I asked them to request that the valuer changes their request to say that we should ensure timber and damp is fully covered during a level 3 RICS approved building survey, and I included some of my rationale above.
In the meantime I did contact some timber and damp specialists. I called one to basically sound him out, and I think I offended him a bit by saying that I was worried about getting back a report which overdiagnosed. I suppose in hindsight that's the sort of response I wanted. I still really don't want to pay 400 quid for something that will be assessed in my building survey though.
The lender's valuer's then response came:
Notes:After a review of the information provided and my further research, I have concluded that
this level of information is outside the scope of an MV, as per the valuation report advise - There is evidence
of dampness and timbers in contact may be defective. You should instruct a specialist damp and timber
treatment contractor to investigate the full extent.
Which reads to me that they didn't properly read my request and just doubled down, giving no rationale for insisting on a contractor rather than surveyor, and all they really said was that it's outside their scope and they don't know what they are on about. So I've had to request the lender to send a more succinct and pointed version of my original request.
Of course this takes days back and forth. Just having a rant about how a mortgage valuer somehow holds the keys to everything, yet is uncontactable and incompetent at the same time.
This isn't necessarily on our critical path yet as the solicitor has plenty to get on with in the meantime, but I'm starting to wonder if I should just got ahead with the T+D contractor survey
Associate
Finally exchanged on the sale of an apartment in England yesterday, completion 14th May. There was no chain and it took 3 months from offer to exchange, a nightmare. Has been bought by a company for investment (lucky neighbours), but the detail and documentation they needed for commercial purchase / loan was a nightmare compared to a domestic transaction. Never again 
.
Good luck everyone else in this daft process on this thread... we need a faster more secure method of buying and selling property in England.
.Good luck everyone else in this daft process on this thread... we need a faster more secure method of buying and selling property in England.
Sounds like quite the nightmare
We've started to receive lots back from our solicitor which is great. Documentation including contract, title plan, stamp duty declaration, warranties, party wall agreements, utility/local area searches etc. So I'm about to embark on a 2hr readathon
We also had back our survey last week which raised a number of red flags. Quite scary reading! Fortunately because we plan to do a loft conversion asap the roof (rated the worst and needs replacing asap) doesn't matter so much, as do some of the damp/potential damp issues at the back as we will rebuild the rear kitchen extension. Had a good chat with the surveyor and although his report was quite scary, we explained all this and seemed very relaxed about it all. He said the only thing we should do is get a drainage survey/report done which we'll hopefully get booked in (and done?) this week. As he saw debris in the drain in the rear garden and it looked like concrete slabs had subsided. Eek. He also said other stuff like do some replastering inside etc. but nothing else sounded particularly dangerous and/or needed immediate attention. He even said he really liked the house
Going to contact our solicitor on Monday so she can tell us what's next. We've got all the stuff to read and sign but unclear how many more searches they're waiting on?
EDIT: For those following the drama about the white goods. We queried with the agents and the seller's went back to them and said they were "confused" and thought they had to get rid of them. lol. So they'll come back to the agent on Monday with what they want to do. We not-so-subtly informed the agent of our "surprise" of so many red flags on the building survey - so hopefully that will dissuade the sellers from doing anything daft like trying to charge us for the white goods!
Soldato
Most thorough surveys on houses that aren't maintained flawlessly are going to be somewhat scary I think. Is drainage not covered in your survey? I'm guessing it was a full building survey rather than Homebuyer's report?
Drainage is typically separate. You can pay for an endoscope survey to confirm there isn't a collapsed drain.
Remember the surveyor is going to cover their ass. So it'll be at the most ridiculous end of "fix this, replace that" on the off chance they miss something. Never once heard of where people called the surveyor and they haven't downplayed what they put in the report.
Yep full building survey. He strongly recommended the drain survey because he pulled up the cover and saw debris, and evidence of the concrete slabs possibly subsidising. The drain is about a foot from the rear wall.
As the post above he was perfectly fine on the phone, especially when we told him the work we'd plan on doing. Stuff like the seized front bay window we'd already budgeted to replace because it isn't double glazed (wasn't replaced with the others).I think the only surprises was the front garden wall being dangerous, and his recommendation to replaster everywhere.
Soldato
Finally put my flat on the market which is attracting a lot of interest. Had an offer from a person who hasn't actually viewed the property other than online. Two people viewed on Saturday and both put in offers at asking and over. Four more coming tomorrow, 4 on Tuesday and more stacking up for next weekend.
Worry now is whether we can find somewhere suitable in a fast moving market.
Worry now is whether we can find somewhere suitable in a fast moving market.
Soldato
Really struggling to find a surveyor for our purchase, emailed a few last week and they're all booked up until mid June - we're hoping to be exchanged by end of May!
House is only 13 years old and certainly feels very well built so I'm not overly worried (it was built for the original owners to their spec, and they lived there for 6 years), so half tempted to just not bother. However, knowing my luck, if we ever sell it the buyers survey would find it was built wrong and is really broken if I don't !
This is for near Bedford
House is only 13 years old and certainly feels very well built so I'm not overly worried (it was built for the original owners to their spec, and they lived there for 6 years), so half tempted to just not bother. However, knowing my luck, if we ever sell it the buyers survey would find it was built wrong and is really broken if I don't !
This is for near Bedford