Mortgage denied :(

pledgeX

Hi all


We applied for a mortgage with Nationwide a week or so ago. We had the valuation and survey done and got the results a few days ago. No items were in red, there were a couple of advisories in orange but nothing major.


However, our application was denied because apparently it is of "non-standard construction". We were a bit baffled by this as it's a normal looking house and had no 'oddities' to our knowledge. After a bit of back and forwarding it turns out it was declined as it is a timber frame construction, which isn't that uncommon, but Nationwide's policy will not cover you if it was built before 1970, and the surveyor has put our house as being built in 1969


We will be querying this as there's a lot of other houses on the road, so it is more than likely that a lot of these house will be built in exactly the same way and would probably have been built over a couple of years stretch so ours may have been built in 1970 which would mean we are ok.


Has anyone else come across something like this, anything we can try and do to 'convince' them otherwise? Is this common policy across other lenders? As even if we do get the mortgage approved, we don't want to get in situation where we can't sell as no-one can get a mortgage approved in the future.



Thanks for any help.

poppy10_2

Nationwide withdrew from offering mortgages for older timber frame buildings back in 2008.

anything we can try and do to 'convince' them otherwise?

Nope, that's their policy, and they aren't going to make a special exception for you. I'd suggest you go to a whole-of-market broker and find an alternative lender who will be willing to provide a mortgage on the property.

pledgeX

poppy10 wrote: »

Nope, that's their policy, and they aren't going to make a special exception for you. I'd suggest you go to a whole-of-market broker and find an alternative lender who will be willing to provide a mortgage on the property.

Is this a common criteria thing for lenders? We are with a whole of market broker currently so will be scouting around for other deals if this all falls through. But even if we can find a mortgage, we might think twice about the house as other people might not be able to get a mortgage on it for the same reason a few years down the line...

hillcats

Personally, would not touch any property of "non std construction" as problems buying will obviously mean problems selling... not worth the hassle IMHO.

pledgeX

hillcats wrote: »

Personally, would not touch any property of "non std construction" as problems buying will obviously mean problems selling... not worth the hassle IMHO.

I agree, but a timber frame is not really non-standard construction, it's quite common, it's just the age criteria that Nationwide have in place that is the problem rather than the actual construction type.

If other lenders have the same or similar criteria then I agree we'll probably stay on the hunt for another place, but if Nationwide are a one off then we might look for another lender.