RBS Mortgage withdrawl

SuperSur

Hi there.

I am looking for some advice if you wouldn't mind. Please bear with me whilst I try to explain this situation best I can, as it's all a bit confusing and has caused incredible amounts of stress.

My husband are in the process of trying to buy a house, with the assistance of a broker. After some considerable time getting all the right paperwork in place we applied with the RBS several weeks ago. Everything went through ok, and were told everything was great, we would definitely be able to draw down the money by last Friday. So on this we went ahead and paid the deposit on the house £60k as well as ordering the other money we needed together with the mortgage to pay for the house. However on Thursday we had a phonecall from the broker to say that all of a sudden the offer had been withdrawn...this was due to the fact that at the very last moment the underwriter had discovered that the house lay in 7 acres of ground and not 2 acres of ground which is their maximum for a residential mortgage, and therefor this house must be a commercial property (which it's absolutely NOT). This is something which no one had picked up on in either the original valuation (which they recieved on our applying for the mortgage) OR the valuation which we had done in the last few weeks.

Needles to say we were sent into a bit of a blind panic as if worst comes to it we could stand to lose our deposit. On speaking to the broker today he has told us that he has set them up with an appeal against their decision to pull out at the very last moment. From what we can understand, the RBS are currently organising their mortgages in order to sell on, and he was told by the woman who he spoke to at the RBS that before Christmas the issue with the land being 7 acres and not 2 would not have been flagged up, but since then they have changed their rules. It may well most likely be that because these rules have only very recently come into place that whoever gave the initial go ahead to our application did not actualy fully realise that the rules had been changed and only upon the application getting to the final stages did the last underwriter decline it.

Our soliciter is happy to write to the RBS to explain fully that the house is in no way intended for anything other than residential use. He is also willing (if needs be) to split the title deeds. We are currently sitting a week after the entry date, with little knowledge of just exactly what we are going to expect next and are feeling incredibly stressed about the whole situation.

My question is, has anyone else heard of a situation such as this before? Is it likely that our appeal could be successful or when a bank decided to pull out on something, it doesn't matter a toss what the concequences are for the customer?

We have tried for a mortgage with another bank but they weren't able to give us the amount we were after. We are reluctant to try any more at the moment as we realise that the searches they use could seriously affect the credit score.

I just don't know what to make of this. 48 hours with no sleep and my brain is completely fried.

Thanks.

Senior_Paper_Monitor

Immediate thoughts are that someone is going to be in trouble - either the surveyor, conveyancing solicitor (who should have seen the deeds) or the underwriter! - if my recollection is correct, there is a very clear question on the RBS application form about area of associated land (will check that).

However - that doesn't help the case.

Splitting the land plot is not unknown to resolve this issue (but normally spotted well in advance) - there are costs involved but can be actioned fairly quickly if the vendor is willing to co-operate.

Probably worth doing anyway with future resale in mind becasue this a condition of all but a few specialist lenders - starts affecting policy with many lenders at above 1/2 acre amazingly (a ridiculous state of affairs in my personal opinion).

SuperSur

Thanks for that. Would you be hopeful in our situation that they could review their decision and perhaps go ahead with the mortgage as agreed or will they be more likely stick to their withdrawl?

Our soliciter has even said he will send them the land registry details to proove that it's residential.