Advice on shocking treatment

FraserJ

Hi,

I'm in a very long process of getting a mortgage with a certain Spanish bank and it's turning into a joke.

I had a mortgage for 5 years with Alliance and Leicster and now we're moving house, extending and porting the mortgage to another property. It has taken 8 weeks to get to the point of a survey being carried and out and this has required to me to call every day to check progress and continually ask for the process to be escalated.

Every time I call I get a different version of events and a different time scale for what happens next, none of them ever materialised. Finally it got valued and the valuation came back 18k lower than we are offering (268k). Comparable properties are impossible to find as nothing ever sells on the road we are buying on so we cannot disprove the valuation, however we know the person who did it was not local so had no awareness of the added value of the specific location. We have spoken to local companies who carry out valuations and they have all said our offer would get their approval.

Part of me thinks the bank is dragging heels and has influenced the outcome of the valuation because they don't want to port my mortgage rate.

Any suggestions on what I can do to A get them to treat it with a bit of urgency and B have a more competent or knowledgable valuation carried out?

I can see why people say this is so stressful, the banks are appalling!

bigadaj

Problem might be that your not that far above the stamp duty increase level, and so that's a jump of five grand should the house have to be resold. Unless you have comparative evidence it will be difficult to overturn a valuation.

FraserJ

The point I missed is that we're borrowing 241k so it's still less than their valuation at 250k, presumably the LtV buffer is their insurance?

bigadaj

Want rate are you currently on, it could be that your not profitable. The valuation won't be done by the bank, but its not mpossible they could hint that they want a cautious valuation if you are currently losing them money.

FraserJ

BoE plus 1.99% so we're paying 2.49% and putting a 10.1% deposit down, that's what I don't get - even if the valuation is genuine (which I don't accept) my mortgage is still less than the valuation..

Goldiegirl

I'm sorry, I can't believe for a minute that a lender would hint that they would like a low valuation, and that a valuer would oblige.

The valuation is the valuers opinion of the worth of the property as mortgage security, not a market valuation.

Incidentally, how do you know the valuer isn't local?

FraserJ

That's disappointing, I was getting caught up in my own conspiracy theory.

The estate agent said they'd never met them before and they were doing overtime because the regular guy was fully booked. Sounded credible based on the conversations I've had with them.

Thrugelmir

FraserJ wrote: »

Finally it got valued and the valuation came back 18k lower than we are offering (268k).

Seems realistic valuation. At £268k you are paying £8k of stamp duty. Whereas at £250k would only be £2.5k. So £5.5k additional stamp duty to buy £18k of property. Any fall in the market and the selling price would fall back beneath £250k.

Thrugelmir

FraserJ wrote: »

BoE plus 1.99% so we're paying 2.49% and putting a 10.1% deposit down,

You would do well to get a 90% LTV mortgage at that rate.

Dave_Ham

Whilst I think it is incredibly unlikely the lender and valuer are colluding to the lenders benefit, the same lender's porting system is coming up time and time again on here as having issues.

I think in particular with the old A&L mortgages, their system is not robust enough and therefore seems to take time and when part of a chain, the last thing our Estate Agent friends give you is time.

I assume OP is going to need to number crunch where the additional funds can/will come from, as I do not believe they will revalue.

From_St_Neots

FraserJ wrote: »

The point I missed is that we're borrowing 241k so it's still less than their valuation at 250k, presumably the LtV buffer is their insurance?

So you want a 96.4% LTV mortgage or have missed something!!