mortgage lenders solictors want to see everything

donna1975

sorry for long title but couldn't think how to shorten it.

Anyway we're doing part x with wimpey, we finally got mortgage offer friday everything else has been done, all surveys searches etc, so finally we thought all is going ahead and i phoned solictor today in the hope of getting some idea of a moving date and he said that the mortgage lenders solictors have asked to see everything that wimpeys solicitors have sent our solicitor.

1) is this likely to hold us up?
2) is this normal that the mortgage lenders solictors want to see everything?

noyk

If you were lending someone £'000s wouldn't you want to see everything. At the moment i would imagine it's pretty normal, i hope everything is in order and Wimpey didn't offer you too many incentives instead of dropping the price.

donna1975

noyk wrote: »

If you were lending someone £'000s wouldn't you want to see everything. At the moment i would imagine it's pretty normal, i hope everything is in order and Wimpey didn't offer you too many incentives instead of dropping the price.

We have the mortgage offer already though, this is what i dont understand, but as long as it is normal and we aren't going to have another hold up.
I think we did ok with the house, they are buying ours for only 5k less than we wanted and we managed to drop them down a fair whack and we have new carpets and appliances in the kitchen too, so all in all I think its ok.

hethmar

Its probably normal but they are also being a lot more careful over the cash backs and incentives that have been going on the last few years . They will want to check that there is nothing odd going on.

ad9898_3

donna1975 wrote: »

We have the mortgage offer already though, this is what i dont understand, but as long as it is normal and we aren't going to have another hold up.
I think we did ok with the house, they are buying ours for only 5k less than we wanted and we managed to drop them down a fair whack and we have new carpets and appliances in the kitchen too, so all in all I think its ok.

I'm afraid in these times a 'mortgage offer' is no indication that they will lend you the money, until the money is with your solicitor, the banks can do pretty much what they like, including withdrawing the offer on the day of completion, as someone on these very boards found out recently.

Richard_Webster

This indicates that OP's solicitor is not acting for the mortgage lender. thi is unusual. Normally the lender will instruct the buyer' solicitor to act for it.

Sole practitioners get discriminated against by some of the less well known lenders who will insist on using their own solicitor. Is OP's solicitor a sole practitioner? Which lender is it?

As a sole practitioner I always ask the potential buyer client when giving an estimate for conveyancing who their lender is - if they tell me one I can't act for then I tell them to go somewhere else, precisely because of the hassle that OP is now facing. For me the problem only really arise with the less well known ones - all the big ones are fine - Skiton Building Society is prbably the best known of those that won't deal
with me.

So did OP get asked about the likely lender and was there any warning about this kind of likely delay?

geoffky

so skipton ask too many questions?? bet they all wish they had...

Richard_Webster

so skipton ask too many questions?? bet they all wish they had...

Not necessarily. If the buyer's solicitor has the papers he will decide what he needs to satisfy the lender's requirements. In some cases he might take a common-sense view about some marginal points. The lenders don't want a great long questionnaire completed - they just want a certificate that their requirements (which are mainly set down in the Council of Mortgage Lenders' handbook) have been satisfied.

However, if the lender has its own solicitor they will (a) want to see everything the buyer's solicitor has been sent and (b) ask to see some more stuff which the buyer's solicitor might not have bothered with.

For instance if there are some trees in the area with a Tree Preservation Order, if the seller's solicitor didn't have a copy of it, I would simply tell my buyer client that he shouldn't do anything to any trees in the garden without first checking with the Council whether the particualr tree was protected. The separate lender's solicitor would perhaps want to see the order - what that would really have to do with the lender's security I don't know, but there you are! So either the seller is asked to spend maybe £30 to get a copy from the Council or the poor buyer gives up and tells his solicitor to do it to speed things up...

poppysarah

geoffky wrote: »

so skipton ask too many questions?? bet they all wish they had...

I was amused by George Osbourne pointing out recently that banks "would now have to ensure that borrowers could afford to pay back the money they borrow"

I'd have thought this was pretty important but apparently the banking institutions forgot about it for some time.