Mortgage application gone to underwriters, help please!

R&C

We applied for a mortgage through Nationwide nearly 4 weeks ago now. They came back last friday, saying we have been approved, however, the total they will lend us is £16k less than we need. This is due to the fact that they wouldn't take my husbands yearly bonus into account... we have given them numerous letters/documents signed by his director plus his contract to prove he gets it but the service centre had to have a letter from my husbands HR department, nothing else would do. I find that a bit silly really as surely a contract is the best proof you could have?! We are already existing customers, and we are porting the mortgage we already have, whilst borrowing an additional £120k.


My husbands regional HR department said that they can't sign anything to confirm his bonus as they only deal with basic salaries, the bonus has nothing to do with them. Which left us in a bit of a pickle! Yesterday, however, my husband spoke to a HR guy based in his office who said as a favour he would sign a letter to confirm his bonus as long as it was countersigned by my husbands boss. Great we thought, everything will be fine now. Our mortgage advisor can fax the letter over to the service center and it'll all be sorted! We heard today though that it seems too little too late and a case had been prepared for the underwriters *gulp*

I'm just wondering what the procedure is here? How long would it usually take for a decision? How strict are they? We have had the mortgage approved it's just the extra £16k that is the question, and now we've proved the bonus surely everything will be ok, won't it?

theodog

R&C wrote: »

We applied for a mortgage through Nationwide nearly 4 weeks ago now. They came back last friday, saying we have been approved, however, the total they will lend us is £16k less than we need. This is due to the fact that they wouldn't take my husbands yearly bonus into account... we have given them numerous letters/documents signed by his director plus his contract to prove he gets it but the service centre had to have a letter from my husbands HR department, nothing else would do. I find that a bit silly really as surely a contract is the best proof you could have?! We are already existing customers, and we are porting the mortgage we already have, whilst borrowing an additional £120k.


My husbands regional HR department said that they can't sign anything to confirm his bonus as they only deal with basic salaries, the bonus has nothing to do with them. Which left us in a bit of a pickle! Yesterday, however, my husband spoke to a HR guy based in his office who said as a favour he would sign a letter to confirm his bonus as long as it was countersigned by my husbands boss. Great we thought, everything will be fine now. Our mortgage advisor can fax the letter over to the service center and it'll all be sorted! We heard today though that it seems too little too late and a case had been prepared for the underwriters *gulp*

I'm just wondering what the procedure is here? How long would it usually take for a decision? How strict are they? We have had the mortgage approved it's just the extra £16k that is the question, and now we've proved the bonus surely everything will be ok, won't it?

This happened to us too owing to an error on the application form(it was done on the phone and they filled the form in wrong) our application went to the underwriters.
As long as everything you are claiming to earn can be proven as they ask I dont see a problem.
Apparently all lenders are now being much stricter and are refering a lot more applications to their underwriters as they are so risk averse these days.
Hope this puts your mind at ease a bit it is probably not as bad as you think.
Good luck Theodog:beer:

R&C

Thanks theodog, yes that does help! can I ask how long it took for them to make a decision?

theodog

Well it was a bit different for us as we had to exchange contracts within 9days of accepting our offer as we had a cash buyer in a hurry!!I ws very lucky and pleaded with our lender(Britannia) and they fast tracked the whole thing for us and in the end it only took a week for the whole thing, but they told us in normal situations it could be a couple of weeks.My advice is to hastle them I am terrible at this.Find out the name of the person dealing with your mortgage and just keep ringing them up get them to tell you when a decisison will be made and then hastle hastle hastle.Explain the whole story and try and make them feel sorry for you!!!!Sounds bad , but?!!!!.Sometimes I think this is the only way to get things done in this country now.:rolleyes:

R&C

Gosh, if only it could be as quick as that! This whole buying and selling business is just so stressful and everything keeps taking forever! Thanks for the reassurance,hopefully we'll be ok too!

theodog

Just keep on at them Good Luck

TroJon

Sounds like a lazy salesman.

Just because details have gone to an underwriter means absolutely nothing.

You can pretty much adjust ANYTHING up until funds are transferred. Seeing as you haven't had a mortgage offer yet, you can definately change anything you want and your case will just be re-submitted to the underwriters if required.

If the person you are personally dealing with is not being helpful, call in their line and ask for someone else, different companies work targets/bonuses in a different way, but hopefully the bonus/target has not been applied yet so someone else may be willing to take your case instead (hope that makes sense) - otherwise the other person would just be doing admin for someone else's comission...

Wakey2008

TroJon wrote: »

Sounds like a lazy salesman.

Just because details have gone to an underwriter means absolutely nothing.

You can pretty much adjust ANYTHING up until funds are transferred. Seeing as you haven't had a mortgage offer yet, you can definately change anything you want and your case will just be re-submitted to the underwriters if required.

If the person you are personally dealing with is not being helpful, call in their line and ask for someone else, different companies work targets/bonuses in a different way, but hopefully the bonus/target has not been applied yet so someone else may be willing to take your case instead (hope that makes sense) - otherwise the other person would just be doing admin for someone else's comission...

Underwriters are never paid commision for dealing with a case. They work as administrators. In today's market many actual bank/building society advisers don't get anything for doing a mortgage for you either. The only commision generated is from insurances.

R&C

Just to update this...

The application didn't go to the underwriters until today in the end. It turned out that the reason why the service centre wanted i to go to the underwriters was because the document my OHs HR department signed showed his bonus in a percentage (he gets between 10-20%). I don't know why they couldn't just get a calculator and work out what the 10-20% is but there you go.

So we ended up getting the exact same thing signed by his HR again only with proper figures and got the bank to send this to the service centre. We believed everything would be fine after that but a day later we were told that it still wasn't acceptable because -

1. My OH hasn't been in the same role for three years (he has worked at the company for 5 years, but has only been in this role for 1.5 years, so hasn't had three years worth of bonuses. & 2. They don't like accepting a mortgage on target related bonuses.

It seemed everytime there was an issue and we resolved it, they would think of something else to have an issue with.

Is the application going to the underwriters a really bad thing? I'm mostly panicking due to the fact that our last 6 months statements show us in our overdraft We don't have any other debt at all and all credit scoring has been fine. We don't have any bank charges or anything either. How much will the overdraft affect our application?

Sorry for the wibble, and thanks for the advice so far!