Mortgage offer withdrawn just before contracts exchanged

Cjs_2

Hi - I wonder if anyone can advise.

We are purchasing a BTL property with a 30% deposit. We received a mortgage offer from The Mortgage Works almost three weeks ago and this contained the valuation report which stated that 'indication of damp had been noted'. However, TMW were aware of this when they sent the mortgage offer through.

Today, we were about to exchange contracts (fortunately hadn't) when my solicitor received a fax from TMW stating that they were withdrawing their mortgage offer because it had come to light that the valuation showed damp on the property.

I don't understand how or why this has happened (ie they knew about this when they made the original offer and nothing has changed). Also, we have now incurred almost £1500 in solicitors fees for all of the work - as well as the valuation fee to TMW. We will now lose the property too - can anyone advise if there is something we can do?

Many thanks

GMS

Refer it to a manager and ask why this wasn't noted originally. Suggest a damp report and agree a remedy.

Always a chance that this is an easy excuse for them if they have noted additional concerns.

kingstreet

Your broker should be sorting this via his BDM.

Cjs_2

GMS wrote: »

Always a chance that this is an easy excuse for them if they have noted additional concerns.

Thanks for your input. Now I've read your response I'm wondering whether I've inadvertently caused this problem. With the property we are purchasing BTL we were gazumped and had to increase our offer a couple of weeks ago (after we received our mortgage offer) and used savings we had put aside for improvements to our own home to make up the difference.

Because we are in the middle of work to our home (worth £475k with a £126k mortgage with the Nationwide - which is the same company as The Mortgage Works), I applied to increase our mortgage by £6k to finish the work - and have received confirmation that this has been approved.

In addition, because we have so much money transferring around our various accounts over the next few weeks up to completion, and we didn't have an overdraft on our Nationwide Flex account (because we've never been overdrawn) I thought it would be wise to apply for a £500 overdraft this morning just in case we temporarily went OD - not realising that it affected credit ratings etc I said I had no problem with them running a credit check. It was a couple of hours after this that the Mortgage offer was taken away.

Is it possible that this has caused the concern? and if so is it too late to do anything about it?

GMS

It may be that a credit check was done prior to funds release and additional credit found. Could be any number of reasons.

If the valuation report stated damp but no retention or need for a specialist report then they really shouldn't use it now. If it was missed then spotted later on they may well get twitchy.

Did you amend the purchase price with TMW? If not they may have received the Certificate of Title and spotted the difference and pulled for that.

You really need to speak to your broker and see what they can do.

Other than that you would need to look for a new lender quickly.