Obtaining a mortgage offer on a property.

Jvic28

Hi Everyone,

Hope you understand my story and can give me some advise.

I own a flat which I live in with my boyfriend and 7 month old son. It's only a one bedroom and obviously we now need somewhere bigger and closer to my family.

It's going to take a while to organise the sale of my flat but my boyfriend has said if somewhere comes up he can afford to make the payments on another property.

We viewed somewhere on the weekend which it turns out is now going to auction. We don't want to go to auction so thought we'd try our luck at making an offer beforehand. It's guide price at auction is £40,000 so we thought we'd make an offer for £45,000 although my boyfriend hasn't applied for a mortgage yet but will start making calls this evening.

I called the auction house (Darlows showed us round but advised me to call the auction people). She said she doubt they would withdraw it for £45,000 and they would need a mortgage offer on that property not just a mortgage offer in principle before they would consider withdrawing it and that auction terms would still apply (ie.exchanging immediatly etc). I think she just wanted the property to go to auction which is obvious as they make money on it.

What I want to know is can you get a mortgage offer on a property for free, don't you have to pay valuation fee's or anything 1st. We wouldn't want to spend out and they don't accept the offer anyway.
Thanks for reading, I hope someone can give me some advice.

happybroker

it depends on the lender, I would engage a good whole of market broker for this as you need some one who can offer advice and knows where to take it.

Jvic28

Thanks. We're going to the bank tonight just for some advice and a quote but will obviously go to a broker aswel. So are you saying that some lenders wouldn't charge to make a mortgage offer on a property even if you didn't end up getting that property. I assumed they would need to send people out to the property (as they did when I bought my flat) and would charge for doing this.

Jvic28

Well the trip to the bank was not a success. see here: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=2237799