Remortgage

[Deleted User]

My partner has applied to remortgage his house (there is no mortgage on it currently) in order to pay off the mortgage on my house and enable my ex to be removed from the deeds/mortgage (its an offset account). Its quite a small amount and only represents 20% LTV of his house.

We have gone with HSBC as he has always banked with them and they indicated there would be no problem with it. However, its taking forever! The initial request went in in March and at first they implied it would be a fairly straightforward procedure. Then about 3 weeks ago they decided they wanted a valuation. The valuer came to do the report on the same day that we got a letter from the bank confirming that they were offering us the mortgage. Then, the next day we got a whole pile of paperwork from the bank's solicitors which we have just managed to work our way through.

One of the questions which concerns me is that it asks if anyone else lives in the property who will not be on the deeds and we answered that I do. From my memory of when I took out my business loan I recall that my daughter had to go along to a solicitor and sign a document recinding her interest in the house. Will they ask me to do this?

I understand that all the boxes have to be ticked but my solicitor has been waiting for ages to do the transfer of equity etc and he keeps asking when we will be ready to proceed and we can't seem to pin down HSBC. Their questionnaire rather amusingly asks when you would like to complete and then has a separate statement saying it cannot commit to any timescale but will try to do everything as quickly as it can!

I just wondered if any mortgage gurus might be able to give me an indication of timescales so I can keep my solicitor (and the ex!) informed

Thanks