Why is my mortgage incredibly slow?

sarah77

stolt wrote: »

i'm getting seriously worried after reading this thread, sent our application off to chelsea bs lst week and i spoke to them tuesday and they have sent my application off to the underwriters (they said it took about 14 days for a reply) so i dont know at what stage they send the valuer out to the house. was hoping to move in end of april!

I wouldnt worry too much. Your application appears to be going to plan. Our problem has been getting our documents to the underwriter as Abbey keep asking for more documents

Conrad

I had a surpise this week. On Thursday afternoon I submitted an online Abbey application for a client. The drive by valuation was done the next morning and it was offered yesterday afternoon!

I've done this clients past mortgages also, yet one of those took about 8 weeks with N Rock.

This clients application could so easily have taken Abbey some time as there were a few issues, but by pure luck it went through in 24 hours.

The reason some cases take a long time is down largely to serendipity.
Halifax and Abbey are pretty much identical in terms of service and procedure, so it's more a case of luck than anything.

Having said all this, some brokers are more thorough and think through all the possible snags at outset and should come up with ways to minimise these, particularly at credit score stage. There are dozens of tweaks a decent broker can introduce at score stage to improve the spped of application.

One way you can spot a good broker is they do everything fast. As an example if I was about to go home and a client came in with an urgent enquiry, I will tend to do the application there and then rather than let them stew anight / weekend. When I was a regional manager for a brokers, it was noticable that some staff were far too relaxed in thier approach, sometimes not inputting a case for days.

sarah77

Conrad wrote: »

I had a surpise this week. On Thursday afternoon I submitted an online Abbey application for a client. The drive by valuation was done the next morning and it was offered yesterday afternoon!

I've done this clients past mortgages also, yet one of those took about 8 weeks with N Rock.

This clients application could so easily have taken Abbey some time as there were a few issues, but by pure luck it went through in 24 hours.

The reason some cases take a long time is down largely to serendipity.
Halifax and Abbey are pretty much identical in terms of service and procedure, so it's more a case of luck than anything.

Having said all this, some brokers are more thorough and think through all the possible snags at outset and should come up with ways to minimise these, particularly at credit score stage. There are dozens of tweaks a decent broker can introduce at score stage to improve the spped of application.

One way you can spot a good broker is they do everything fast. As an example if I was about to go home and a client came in with an urgent enquiry, I will tend to do the application there and then rather than let them stew anight / weekend. When I was a regional manager for a brokers, it was noticable that some staff were far too relaxed in thier approach, sometimes not inputting a case for days.

Thats interesting. Only wish we had been half as lucky!
I wonder if you can answer a ques re underwriting?...On Wednesday our broker told us that Abbey now have all the documents they need and its just a case of waiting for it to be seen by an underwriter. Would you have an idea how long the process might take before a decision on mortgage approval is made...for example can a broker usually get an answer on the same day the documents are seen by the underwriter and is it normal for documents to be in a 'que' to see an underwriter? We have been told by our broker that there is a backlog at Abbey and we may not have a decision before Tuesday (we go on holiday on Tues for 10 days and EA really want some confirmation before then that something is actually happening). Would it be appropriate to have my broker speak to the EA as they are talking about putting the house back on the market as its nearly 8 weeks since offer was accepted.

julliff

I applied for a mrtgage in 1993 with Abbey, and it took 5 months!:eek:

thepeachyone

thepeachyone wrote: »

Has anyone else found their mortgage application incredibly slow? Its driving me crazy. It never used to be like this. It came back refer, but this turned out to be because someone had mis-keyed in my husbands date of birth. Its been a week now I cant remember it taking this long in the past to say they will lend to us.

I am absolutely amazed to say that we are still waiting for the formal offer on paper. We have had an offer in principle over the phone, we have paid our valuation fee, thats been done, found OK, the co-op underwriters have just kept asking for different pieces of information. Its unbelievable. Whats even more annoying is my husbands employer has taken over 2 weeks to respond to 5 faxes and 1 letter sent by the lender asking them to verify some information. What is ironic is that we both have a good credit rating, no problems with mortgages or loans previously. The only explanation we can think of is because my husband has only been in his current job for 6 months (but he was in his previous one continuously for 30 years!).

I have just made a search for this thread as I couldnt remember the exact date we first applied and Im astonished to find it was actually FEBRUARY!!! When we were looking the co-op came up with the best deal in terms of rates and no charges so we went with them. Its obviously got too late to change now, fortunately our house has no chain and the developer will hold on as they recommended the co-op bank broker to us.

The moral of the story is, if you are in a hurry for a mortgage dont use the co-op.

thepeachyone

sarah77 wrote: »

I wouldnt worry too much. Your application appears to be going to plan. Our problem has been getting our documents to the underwriter as Abbey keep asking for more documents

I see Im not the only one. I hope you have got yours by now.