Halifax survey taking forever. Is this common?

mezebu1

Getting exasperated here!

We found a house we like, agreed a sale price and engaged the services of a broker as our work situation is kind of peculiar; I'm in permanent employment and OH is a contractor.

We have submitted our supporting documentation and survey fees of £795 was taken off my account on 1st July, we've been told by our broker survey has been instructed but 2 weeks later, survey is still not actually booked:mad:!!! We have been told by our broker that this is normal as Halifax has a back log of applications and their surveyors are struggling to keep up with demand particularly in London and the home counties.

I have read on here that brokers have 'insider' knowledge and are able to expedite the whole application process and that was my Broker's pitch before we took him on, the story is sort of different now that he has the business:eek:. I so hate not being in control of my own affairs and if we went to Halifax directly, I would have been chasing them like!!!

Is anyone else experiencing this? How can we get this moving on...

Thanks

moneyistooshorttomention

Maybe it depends on what part of the country you are in?

Halifax DOES send their surveyors pretty darn quick (ie within a few days literally) in some parts of the country I know and was correspondingly astonished to see that some of their buyers are having to wait weeks for them to do the survey.

kingstreet

If you want speed, it would have been more sensible to have Halifax do its mortgage report and valuation and you contracted a surveyor of your choice to carry out your "scheme two".

You will wait longer by the route you have chosen. Halifax ensures its valuations get done first and those wanting extended reports suffer as a result.

mezebu1

kingstreet wrote: »

If you want speed, it would have been more sensible to have Halifax do its mortgage report and valuation and you contracted a surveyor of your choice to carry out your "scheme two".

You will wait longer by the route you have chosen. Halifax ensures its valuations get done first and those wanting extended reports suffer as a result.

Oh, I see!!!! I didn't actually know Halifax pushes Levels 2 and 3 surveys down the queue and prioritize the 'valuations' in high demand areas..

So @kingstreet, is it possible to get the survey 'downgraded' to just valuation and get a refund, instructing an independent surveyor to do a Level 2? Would this get things expedited or is it too late to do that?

Thanks.

Out,_Vile_Jelly

I am experiencing similar problems with a mortgage with Lloyds (property in South London), and have been told it's because of high demand and summer holidays.

I was thinking of looking for another deal elsewhere, but don't know if I'll just end up in the same situation after forking out yet more cash.

Moonraker71

My friends are using Halifax and they had to wait ages for a valuation, even though they went with a local surveyor for their full building survey. They submitted their full application on June 20th and their valuation was done last Thurs (9th July). This is in Brighton. I am using NatWest and experienced similar problems - mine was just over three weeks from application to combined valuation/survey in total (thankfully not the six weeks they originally warned me it would be.)

Moonraker71

PS. Not sure about Halifax, but when things were taking ages with NatWest I asked if I could remove the Homebuyers Report element and just go for the valuation, but they said the act of doing this would send me to the back of the queue. Not sure if this was just baloney, but freaked me out enough to just leave it be...

Seabee42

Sadly this is all to common in some areas.

The first house we bid on the survey results did not arrive until week 6 sadly we then pulled out.

The second house currently trying to progress on the survey has been booked for the 25th July nearly 3 weeks after paying. (This is through First Direct) I do not think the bank matters much.

regards


Crispin

starsky27

My buyers survey is taking seven weeks to be completed , that's with Halifax and our property is in London.
The property we are buying is through Woolwich and we have been forewarned by my mortgage broker that the timescale is about the same.
Very frustrating and the waiting is driving us mad...

mezebu1

Quite frustrating isn't it?

Just had a phone call from broker and a date has finally been fixed - August 6; 5 weeks after survey was instructed..

kingstreet

There have been other recent threads on here (search Colleys homebuyers etc) and you'll probably find them.

There is anecdotal evidence that requesting a homebuyer's report via Colleys increases the response time, as they are much busier these days trying to cope with the demand for basic mortgage valuations.

Trying to change from a more detailed report to a basic valuation may reduce the time - I don't know.

Colleys - 0845 602 2222