Please help! First time buyer, inexperienced.

ruthoid

HI,
I would be grateful for your advice.

I am a first time buyer and have had an offer accepted on a house. The bank have approved a mortgage in principal but appear to be taking their time to fully endorse the mortgage. I have just spoken to our broker who told me that the bank now want a full list of quotes and reports for ALL repair and refurbishment on the house - basically, everything which showed up on the survey and including non-essential repairs (e.g. new bathroom); before they give a decision. I understood from the broker that the bank were not prepared to release the nortgage until all of this work was carried out. This surprises me.... I spoke to the surveyor who explained that normally what happens is that the bank will will say 'we will give oyu the mortgage but we are going to hold back 10k (the estimate of the essential repair work) until the essential reparis are carried out.'

I am feeling very anxious. WE are now trying to pull together reports and quotes for everything that needs to be done to the house, according to the survey.

Does anyone know what might be going on from the bank's point of view?
Why would they want a list of reports and quotes for ALL work to be done to the house? ie not just essential repairs but everything on the survey (we had not planned to fit a new kitchen or bathroom for a few years yet!)
Any thoughts, advice etc would be gratefull received. I feel that I am missing part of the picture.

warmest, R

sonastin

I agree it sounds very strange. I can't think why the bank are going into so much detail. Sorry I can't help...

madmish00

This does seem very strange. I have heard of this type of thing where there are structural repairs that need to be carried out because obviously if the house falls down and you fail to pay the mortgage they have nothing to repossess. But interior furnishings...now that is odd.

Can you not enquire with the mortgage broker as to why this is required?

Fewsterl

Hi, we are torn!

We are currently renting a house, up for sale for £105,000. We have £10k in the bank which we could put down if we were to buy this house. We would then need to find money to pay for extra fees etc and wouldn't have any money to spend on the house.

We have also been initially accepted for a £153,950 property on the 85/15 scheme which is beautiful and is big enough for us to grow in. We would still have some cash as we only have to give 5% deposit but the mortgage payments are quite high but affordable right now. After 2 years it would go from fixed to variable. We would also only get 10% interest free on the 15% so what would we do then?

OR do we rent somewhere else and carry on saving for a while?

Decisions decisions!