Mortgage offer valid for 6 weeks only

Grimbal

posting on behalf of a friend, many thanks for any advice:

The vendor of the the house that my friend & her partner (F&P) wish to buy has been particularly flaky/ignorant/stupid throughout their house buying process. F&P have made arrangements to sign the exchange document this Thursday & have now been advised that the vendor's mortgage offer runs out on Friday (& will not be renewed) - only 6 weeks from when it was issued. F&P's lender needs >1day from exchange to completion, so they're worried everything's going to fall apart


Is this becoming more standard practice in these hard times now? Am I right to be surprised about an offer only being valid for 6 weeks ?


The vendor's solicitor has confirmed that the mortgage offer will not be renewed, but we're wondering if that is only after being told that by the vendor & not confirming it themselves. The vendor has been bluffing/avoiding issues throughout, so it's entirely possible that he's once again up to his old tricks.


TIA for any advice or guidance.

Fire_Fox

If you think it is not true ask your conveyancer to confirm his counterpart has had sight of the mortgage offer.

Grimbal

yup, exactly what she has done. The lender's conveyancer might have seen the mortgage offer, but may have only received the "no extension" notice via the vendor himself.

What surprises me is the very short window that the mortgage offer was valid for - 6 weeks seems hardly enough time to get the searches done! We're wondering if there also could be a reason why such a short time frame was offered perhaps ?

Fire_Fox

Why does it matter? Nobody knows the buyer so would only be guessing.

Grimbal

why does knowing reasons for a very short term mortgage offer matter ? Maybe because it sheds some light to what situation the vendor is in at the moment.

I agree that there's very little that can be practically done by F&P, but they would still find it useful for any insight as to why a mortgage offer would be given with such little time on it.

kingstreet

The length of the offer may result from the time it has taken the application to get to offer.

If, for example, a fixed rate with a drawdown deadline of 30 September was applied for on 1 June, if offered on 3 June would have almost four months to complete.

However, if the same application wasn't successfully underwritten and offered until mid- September, the borrower would have only two weeks to complete.

Grimbal

excellent, thank you so much for your reply - that makes perfect sense !

kingstreet

TBH it will depend on the lender used.

Nationwide has a six month deadline on all its products, so an offer lasts that long in all cases.

Halifax, for example, has its current products set up with a deadline of 28 February 2013. The longer it takes to reach offer would therefore determine, in its case, how long you'd have left of the period until the end of February.

Mobeer

Did I miss something here?
"the vendor's mortgage offer runs out" - do you mean the buyer or the seller, because the vendor is normally the seller. Your friends are the buyers, so should get the contract signed to force the vendor's to sell.

kingstreet

Presumably the vendor is buying on and needs another mortgage too?

Grimbal

Mobeer wrote: »

Did I miss something here?
"the vendor's mortgage offer runs out" - do you mean the buyer or the seller, because the vendor is normally the seller. Your friends are the buyers, so should get the contract signed to force the vendor's to sell.

kingstreet wrote: »

Presumably the vendor is buying on and needs another mortgage too?

exactly KS - the vendor selling the house to F&P is buying onwards & it's HIS mortgage offer that runs out at the end of the week