Halifax have withdrawn offer unfairly...help

LKM1983

Hello

We applied for a re-mortgage from Halifax of 14th April 2010, we are currently with Capstone who offered us a discounted settlement of £15,239.31 which basically brings our mortgage from £98,000 to £83,000 plus a £2,000 bonus if we can complete the remortgage in 6 months. Our house is shared ownership, we own 40% of our home which is the £98,000.

Halifax agreed to the mortgage, covered the legal fees etc and everything was hunky dory. Their solicitor Hugh James were in contact and getting things rolling.

However...4 months later Halifax all of a sudden say they never knew our property is shared ownership and withdrew their offer. We spoke to Hugh James who said as far as they were aware they knew this offer was dealing with a shared ownership property and they had been liasing with London & Quadrant who own the rest of the property. Halifax complaints team are looking into how it took so long for them to realise. They are now saying that we might not be able to get our mortgage with them or they will only offer us 90% of what we wanted to borrow.

I was just wondering if anyone had a similar experience or if there was anything that i could do? On our original application we put down the figures and explained to them on the phone that it was a shared ownership property. I just dont see why we are being punished for their bad communication with the solicitors and for something which isnt out fault!

Basically because it took Halifax 4 months to realise it was a shared ownership property (which we explained to them from the start) we are going to miss out on this discounted settlement and loose out on the reduction on £15,000 from our mortgage.

Any help is appreiciated

Thanks

Lisa

luckyfool

Find out what (if anything) Halifax will actually lend. Then if there is a shortfall of a few thousand then approach Capstone and see if they will increase the discount to allow you to complete on the remortgage (assuming you don't have savings to do it yourself).

HbosMA

4 months seems a long time for a remortgage for a start. Were there any issues along the way with asking for proof of anything?

I would be surprised for a remortgage taking longer than 2 months.

Did you do this direct with a branch/telephone mortgage adviser or was it done through a broker?
If it was done on the phone then go into branch as telephone team arent qualified advisers (just consultants) and might not have the same level of experience that a branch adviser would have.
There should be notes on the file as to why this has just happened so late. Might be incompetence on the part of Halifax mortgage adviser, might be something that they are not telling you due to data protection or some other reason.

Is it a joint application? Any of you got credit problems in the past? And finally are you interest only, your problem could have fallen in the timeslot where we restricted interest only as an option

HbosMA

certainly seems plausible but could also be that the individual keying it forgot to include the rent in the affordability calculation thus bringing down the maximum loan.

either way, you are not going to get an answer on here.

can you ask halifax and report back your findings?

thanks