Britannia Mortgage Process

maurice28

I’m in the process of taking out a mortgage with Britannia with my girlfriend. We are first time buyers and have a 15% deposit. We applied about 2 and a half weeks ago, and in that time have received the agreement in principle, and have since sent in proof of our deposit, letters from parents (who have gifted some of the deposit) and employer references. The valuation and survey were carried out on the house last week and came back fine.

We spoke to someone last week in the contact centre (who was just clarifying a deposit question) and she said the application was due to go through final assessment early this week. She said it looked like this would mean we would get the formal offer sometime this week.

My question was, it says in the literature that first time buyers will be required to provide 3 months’ bank statements, but we have not been asked for these at any point. Have any first time buyers gone through the Britannia process and not been asked for bank statements? Would they have likely asked for these already if they were going to?

Just trying to get an idea of how likely we are to get the offer this week, or if it is going to be another request for information!

QTPie

Hi

Having just gone through this process with Britannia (but not as first time buyers), I would say "don't hold your breath"...

We had a gifted deposit too - although less than a quarter of our 60% desposit was gifted - and that caused us real problems (the completed "gifted deposit" form was submitted when we initially made our application).

Took us about 6 weeks to get the final agreement (after going round in circles for about a month!). Was not impressed with Britannia, but didget a very good rate from them.

My suggestion is to ring them regularly, fulfill any requests immediately (like getting copies of bank statements certified and faxed off - we had to about halfway through the process), ensure that they receive what you have sent and keep phoning them. They generally only re-assess each case once every 6/7 days and tend to follow a flow diagram type process (so you only get one/two demands, you send it off straight away, have to wait a week for them to re-assess and work out what they want next, repeat, repeat, repeat... :mad: ).

Good luck. We got ours eventually, but it sure was like pulling teeth!

QT