L&C mortgage advice left me wanting

Rax1

After reading the remortgage advice on this site I contacted L&C to find me new mortgage.
They found me one and I had my mortgage approved in principle. Paid my booking fee and had my house surveyed.
The mortgage company (Coventry) then refused to complete the mortgage because my house is off-grid (power is supplied by a wind turbine).
Therefore I've lost my booking fee. Does anyone know have if I have any chance of recovering it?
At no point did my adviser tell me what exclusions were operated by Coventry.
Help?!

Glastoun

I've dealt with L&C, on a house-move mortgage, and one of the questions asked was 'Is there anything unusual about the house?'. Did they ask you this question?

dunstonh

At no point did my adviser tell me what exclusions were operated by Coventry.

Realistically, a question about how your house is powered is unlikely to be asked or be expected to be asked. However, a question along the lines of "are you aware of anything non-standard about the property?" is the sort of thing you would expect.

My mortgage adviser usually takes the estate agent particulars for file and looks for anything non-standard in their text before making a formal recommendation.

Rax1

That's what I expected to happen. I didn't expect them to take the booking fee until after they had seen a surveyors report. After all I wouldn't consider offering a mortgage until I knew what the collateral was!

I had so many conversations with them and others that I justcan’t remember. I’ve discussed my power supply so many times at length, I losetrack of who I have told what to.

If they did, then I guess it is my fault for not offeringthe information, but I have lived there like that for over 10 years and no-onehas ever batted an eye before… If only I had seen a copy of the exclusions…

ACG

You wouldnt expect that to be picked up without you specifically mentioning it.

It seems you did, in which case the broker should have spoken to the lender to see what their view on it would be. If you did mention this like you say then i would be complaining to the broker to the refund the money.

Its certainly not coventrys fault, unless the broker did check with coventry and they have said it wouldnt be a problem.

Senior_Paper_Monitor

Coventry are one of the lenders that charge straight to valuation immediately on receipt of application (and fee) UNLESS the broker makes a clear statement to prevent this - we try to ensure that we are aware of all property details (and have pre-approval for anything non standard) before allowing the valuer/surveyor loose.

This should include research such as collecting the details ofd the estate agent or their website (not all brokers do this - it can be time consuming) but we would not ask any specific question about power supply/grid connection beyond the 'anything unusual about the property' one.

There is certainly some duty of responsibility on the OP to make sure the adviser is made aware of anything unusual during the information gathering process, even if the specific question is not asked.


In short - while I like to think we would have spotted it and saved your valuation fee I couldn't guarantee it if you didn't mention it - and if you didn't specifically tell L&C then blaming them may not be justifiable.