Co-Operative Bank Mortgage

Greeniebug

Good Morning All

We are FTB's going for 90% mortgage on a property.

Ok so we are ploughing through a mortgage application with the Co-Op bank. All surveys are done and valuer has priced house at purchase price. He did want a couple of further reports done on wall ties and a small section of cracking wall which we did. Total quotes for this came to £7,000 (£2,000 for the wall ties the rest for inserting a lintel to remedy the cracking brickwork) which we thought very excessive but we needed the reports before the surveyor would OK property to the bank which he has now done. Co-Op now say mortgage offer will be conditional that we show we have £7,000 in our account to cover repairs. I tried to explain that we can get the work done for less and the Wall Tie expert suspected that the cracking brickwork might be linked to wall ties and nothing else but bank still need to see that money in our account before they issue offer and this money must not come from a credit card/loan or even borrowed from a family member ie cash we have saved!!. Has anyone else come across this as I cannot find anything on the net. Needless to say lender are not forthcoming with advice on this...

thanks in advance...

Thrugelmir

Retentions on property requiring remedial works are not uncommon.

Obviously the property is no longer worth the agreed price. So may be worth renegotiating with the vendor, or seeing if they will have the necessary remedial work undertaken.

Greeniebug

Thanks for the response. Obviously we did that with vendor but they say property is valued at at 105,000 now (which it is) and that is the agreed purchase price. Bank is lending us 94,500 (90%) but on condition we have the money in our bank now - not retaining a percentage of the value they lend - to show we can afford repairs. The repairs have not affected the value of the property according to bank/valuer/vendor, it is just that we have to show the funds at this one point in time. That is the bit I don't understand and have not heard of before..

G.

kingstreet

Is there a value now and a higher value after the repairs are done?

Are you going to see any benefit of doing this work?

If the value pre- and post- is still £105k, I'm not sure I'd continue with the purchase.

I'd also think about asking the surveyor if he really meant it...

Greeniebug

Value after repairs is £107,000.

G.

kingstreet

Can you get written estimates for the repairs to give to the bank which come in at £2,000? If so, they might waive the requirement as the value of the property after the repairs will be reflected in the cost you are paying.

I don't see any way out of you forking out to get these done, by the way. It's just a question of whether the bank will play ball if you can get them done cheaper.