Mortgage for extension

spinney123

Hiya,
I am after some advice please. We have paid off our mortgage as of Dec2011 yipppeee, but now want to extend our house. The extension will cost about £40k so we have applied for a £50k mortgage (to give us some spend for fittings etc). We have gone with a first direct offset mortgage and are currently going through the approval process. Do I need to instruct a solicitor? My mortgage company say I do but I can't see what I would need a solicitor for. We own the house and have the deeds and the mortgage is going to us as we will pay the builders as and when the work starts/is completed. Can anyone shed any light on if a solicitor is necessary? Any help or advice would be very much appreciated. Thanks

Gary123456790

Hi,

You need the solicitor to register the lender's charge on the property with land registry and draw down the money from the lender.

As an aside, what have you been doing with the money you were paying towards the mortgage for the last 11 months?

Gary.

spinney123

Aah thanks for the response. I've been on Maternity leave for last 14months and a lot of that was on minimal/no pay. We also bought a new car outright, and I bought into a little franchise business to run alongside my normal part time work. I returned to work in September so now we have spare money for a mortgage again hence the extension.

spinney123

Has anyone got any advice for a cheap (but reliable) conveyancing solicitor? Can you get one online or is it a case of ringing round my local solicitors?

Gary123456790

OK makes sense.

All apart from the buying a new car outright bit!

It would be wise to build up a buffer of funds before committing yourself to increased repayments. This would help allow for boiler/car breakdown or cost increase on the extension without making you struggle.

Gary.

kingstreet

Ensure your potential solicitor is on the FD panel as the work you pay for is predominantly done for the lender.