After survey, what steps remain to complete mortgage?

boots_babe

Hi,

Last November we remortgaged to First Direct. They were inundated at the time and shortly after we applied they stopped any new applications as they were so busy, and they quoted us up to 12 weeks to complete the remortgage. In practice, it took just 4 weeks which was great - we already banked with them which no doubt helped speed things up.

So, we are now in the process of purchasing a new property, and have again applied for a First Direct mortgage. They quoted 10-12 weeks due to being so busy. However, the same day they received our requested documents, they got back to us to confirm application was approved, pending satisfactory survey. They are going to contact our vendor to arrange suitable survey date on Monday.

So, assuming survey is done one day next week, what exactly is left in the process from First Direct's perspective, before they are able to release funds. I'm probably missing something obvious, but I can't see what else is left after that ?

cpdc1030

The question is how much they will lend you - which isn't certain until the survey is done. It seems to be the norm now that surveyors will knock an extra 10-15% off.

boots_babe

I understand that part, but once they get the survey results back through, what other steps are left for them to run through before they would be ready to release the funds to us? I feel like I must be missing something fundamental here, as they only received our application on Thursday, and the survey looks like it'll be completed within the week

Cazza

After the survey is returned, First Direct will finish underwriting the application and send out the mortgage offer. Once your solicitor has the mortgage offer, it's down to how quickly they can complete the legal work. Most lenders want 5 working days notice that the solicitors want to draw down the funds, and you need to allow a few days for the survey to be typed up and sent back to the lender, so that's as good as two weeks. Allow another few days for it to be underwritten and the offer to be printed and sent to the solicitor and you're looking at 3 ish weeks.

It's the sort of thing that if they have no backlog and everything is straightforward, could be done in a week or 10 days, but in reality tends to take much longer. It will take longer if the solicitors need to query or clarify anything with the lender after they have the offer, or if First Direct decide to apply for employers references etc and need to wait for these to be sent back.

boots_babe

Thanks Cazza for the comprehensive reply. Make more sense now - sounds like it's the sending out of the formal offer that we may end up waiting for ages on.

We had someone round to complete survey on our own house on Wednesday, results were emailed to our buyer's lender by lunch the next day, so I had kind of assumed similar turnaround for ours. I guess they may not all be so quick though.

On the solicitor side, I know pretty much what needs doing there. It's just I had initially assumed solicitor work would be completed and we'd be stuck waiting on FD to release the funds for a while. But as things have gone so quickly so far, I was starting to think it might be the other way around!

Cazza

You're right, it can be done a lot quicker. Survey can be ruturned by email, offer issued by fax / email to solicitor on the same day, solicitor asks someone at the lender nicely and gets funds released within 24 hours by TT, all done in less than a week. My record when I was a mortgage adviser was 10 working days from submitting the application form to completion (that was ridiculously stressful!). It just very rarely happens quite like that in real life. The trick is to chase them constantly for updates!