Nationwide's Save to Buy Account/Mortgage

kingstreet

No. The terms are interchangeable.

The Nationwide system carries out a search and issues a decision, which if to accept, includes a list of requirements. As long as you know you have those requirements and they will be acceptable, that's your agreement or decision in principle.

A "refer" normally means the underwriter has a look at the case and adds to the list of requirements at full application stage.

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it, I'm simply suggesting it's unusual.

Jumex

kingstreet wrote: »

No. The terms are interchangeable.

The Nationwide system carries out a search and issues a decision, which if to accept, includes a list of requirements. As long as you know you have those requirements and they will be acceptable, that's your agreement or decision in principle.

A "refer" normally means the underwriter has a look at the case and adds to the list of requirements at full application stage.

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it, I'm simply suggesting it's unusual.

I believe I have a 'CIFAS Fraud Alert' on my credit file. Apparently it shouldn't effect my ability to get credit, however it may cause complications when applying for credit. I have a feeling this may be playing a part.

nakiwala123

Thanks for the update Jumex. I will prepare my savings accounts bank statements for the meeting next week just in case they ask for them.

I will check my credit report for the CIFAs.

happybunny2013

Hi,

I'm not one to write reviews normally, however I relied on the reviews of others during our application so I wanted to give back.

Our experience with Nationwide's Save to Buy mortgage was exceptional, I really cannot recommend it enough. The product and the service we received from branch (we always dealt with the same person, no call centres!) was fantastic and we are now in our first home.
I've got to say that I didn't believe that it would work to be honest. I thought there would be some catch that cropped up that meant we wouldn't get the mortgage. However it really is what it says on the tin. So I thought I would write a review to share a couple of things that may help others:

- dont worry about having a current account with them for ages, we opened one on the day we went in to discuss applying - 6 months after we opened the account and 5 weeks before the official mortgage application (5 weeks of viewings) and it didn't make a difference

- open an experian account before you go to apply for mortgage and pay off credit cards. Dont go in to apply until all the updates are in. Sounds tough but paying our balances boosted our score after the first update from the credit card companies! Which was around 5 weeks. Its worth sacrificing some of that saving to do this.

- we didnt borrow as much as we were offered. we were offered 240,000 but our budget was 150,000 and ended up buying at 137,000. be realistic and this will help your internal scoring on affordability. you can work this out by using their online calculators.

Good luck to all of you, know how hard and worrying a time it is. But if you have a clean credit history and that all important 5% this is definitely a fab choice. Interest rate isn't great but at the end of the day we were desperate to own our own place so it was worth it.

Jumex

Jumex wrote: »

Just an update:

Had my Decision in Principle meeting in my local Nationwide branch yesterday afternoon.

Generally they were very helpful. Our application came back as 'referred'. We were told our income coupled with zero debt and steady address history were all very positive, however they needed proof of deposit and they have requested the following:

• 3 months bank statements
• Proof of deposit (savings statements)

If I'd have known they might have needed these I would have taken them with me.

We have provided these this morning, they will give them to the underwriting team and we'll hopefully get an answer by the middle of next week.

The advisor seemed confident we'd be okay, based on our salaries we would qualify for close to £250,000 in lending, but we're looking for a max of £180,000.

Not quite the green light we were hoping for, but it's certainty not a no, and I'm confident that we should be okay.:)

More updates.

We had contact from Nationwide 3 days after the original appointment, the had taken the wrong copy my OH's payslip. We dropped this in Friday lunch time.

On the weekend we viewied 7 houses, loved one of them.

Lunch time today we received our DIP which is for lending of £171,000 at 95%. Meaning we could do a purchase price of £180,000. Fortunately the property we like is priced at £159,950 currently so we should be good.

We're off for the third house viewing this evening. Offers should follow from there.

Despite taking longer than expected to get the DIP i'm over the moon now.

9 months ago when we moved out of rented accomodation we didnt think buying a house on the open market was even an option - not for a long time. We were considering new builds under one the government schemes.

So glad so have the chance to buy open market now, bigger houses, better locations and hopefully no negative equity.

I'll try to keep our feet on the ground, but it feels quite nice knowing the fun is about to begin.

Jumex

happybunny2013 wrote: »

Hi,

I'm not one to write reviews normally, however I relied on the reviews of others during our application so I wanted to give back.

Our experience with Nationwide's Save to Buy mortgage was exceptional, I really cannot recommend it enough. The product and the service we received from branch (we always dealt with the same person, no call centres!) was fantastic and we are now in our first home.
I've got to say that I didn't believe that it would work to be honest. I thought there would be some catch that cropped up that meant we wouldn't get the mortgage. However it really is what it says on the tin. So I thought I would write a review to share a couple of things that may help others:

- dont worry about having a current account with them for ages, we opened one on the day we went in to discuss applying - 6 months after we opened the account and 5 weeks before the official mortgage application (5 weeks of viewings) and it didn't make a difference

- open an experian account before you go to apply for mortgage and pay off credit cards. Dont go in to apply until all the updates are in. Sounds tough but paying our balances boosted our score after the first update from the credit card companies! Which was around 5 weeks. Its worth sacrificing some of that saving to do this.

- we didnt borrow as much as we were offered. we were offered 240,000 but our budget was 150,000 and ended up buying at 137,000. be realistic and this will help your internal scoring on affordability. you can work this out by using their online calculators.

Good luck to all of you, know how hard and worrying a time it is. But if you have a clean credit history and that all important 5% this is definitely a fab choice. Interest rate isn't great but at the end of the day we were desperate to own our own place so it was worth it.

I agree with all of this. Although i've not fully completed the process, a lot of these steps myself and our other half undertook as well.

As soon as we opened the account we made sure we did everything possible to make our eventual application look as desirable as possible.

To add to the experian credit fie. It's worth checking all of the major 3. I had found I had a late payment listed on 2 but not the other. I managed to get this removed via barclycard, but i'd imagine I would have found it difficult without this being removed.

Also ensure you do have some credit hisotry. My OH didnt have much, so 9 months before applying we got her a credit card, spent £50 a month and cleared in full, probably didnt build much of a credit history, but it's better than nothing.

nakiwala123

We have our DIP meeting tomorrow so I will give an update then.

Velvet_Glove

What they don't tell you when you open it is that if you have a FTC with work, they will only consider you if you have 2 years left on your contract or if you have been renewed before. We were only told this after an hour into the actual DIP meeting, Just something to be aware of.

lexus90

Hi,

we have had our STB 6 months on 27 April, unfortunately, we have just found our ideal house today !! obviously we cant start the application until april, (speaking to estate agents, sellers quite happy to take house of market and wait till april) however we need to do our AIP,

Do we need to have the full 5% deposit ready before the AIP or can we do this before we have the deposit ready?

We will have the deposit ready by time of application in april ??

nakiwala123

Hi All,

We had our DIP meeting last Thursday. We picked the 4 yr fix at 5.49%. Their calculator worked out to be about the same as the one online. They also conducted a credit search. We got the DIP and they asked us to bring 6 months worth of our bank statements from our rent account at the full application stage.

We viewed properties over the weekend and we plan to conduct a 2nd viewing on saturday.