Probate, mortgage offer expiry and change in circumstances-what would you do?

BecD

Advice needed please, what would you do?

Here's our situation:

June- We accepted a offer on our flat, then got mortgage agreed in principle for £240k with Santander based on 2 full time salaries.

July- Found property for £310k (we have deposit and savings of £100K), offer accepted. This property was empty, owner in nursing home, her daugher had power of attorney.

August - We had our first child. Mortgage offer received.

October- expected to be moved by now, but buyer's solicitors v slow and pedantic.

November- just as we are about to exchange this week, the owner of the house we are buying sadly passed away before we had exchanged and now the property will be going into probate.


We don't want to lose our buyer so will complete on our sale and will effectively make ourselves (with a small baby) homeless. Luckily we can spend a few weeks here and there staying with friends/ family.

But- what do we do now..?

In Jan, our mortgage offer expires- will probate be sorted by then, so we can move in? Also I will be going part time, so will not be able to obtain such a large mortgage if we have to apply again or go to another lender.

Do we walk away and find somewhere else? We would lose a lot of money on searches/ valuations/ surveys etc (prob betw 1-1.5k).

Apologies for the long post, but it's a complicated situation and in a day, we have gone from expecting to move in in 2 weeks to being back to square 1!

Help!!!!

Jenniefour

What a difficult situation to be in from a buyers point of view. I don't know what to say other than I acted as an executor of a very straightforward will some years ago and I got a whizz solicitor to get probate for me - and it was done in 8 weeks. So the property was able to be sold very quickly.

Another thought, which may be entirely irrelevant - now that the lady has passed away do the family still want to go ahead and sell the house?

People react very differently after a significant bereavement - some would want to proceed as planned as soon as possible and others might want a period of time not doing anything about the property - this is what your solicitor needs to find out.

Hope it works out.

njh82

Sorry to hear your situation.. Welcome to our world for the past 3 months. We were FTB buying a vacated flat with no chain. Sounds simple. We had a mortgage offer in place , offer accepted, all sorted...wrong, one little word 'Probate!'...personally I think that properties should not be on the market unless probate has been granted. Sorry rant over...basically I just want to warn you about probate...it can be done in 2 weeks but can also take years. It really depends on the solicitors and any issues like family contesting the will etc.

your mortgage lender should extend your mortgage - I would give them a call and explain the situation and ask if worst came to worst woudl an extension be possible - or reoffer(which can be done in a few days as they already have the info).

I sympathsise about your solicitors, my only advice there is bug them until they hate you! (well maybe not literally) but we emailed ours every day asking for progress. we also used the EA..they could get info from the sellors in 5 mins that took our sols days! They want their commission and they shoudl help you kick !!!.

Good luck!