Five months for my buyers mortgage offer to come through!

pennylaneuk

Yes, five months! I know that some reading this will immediately assume that there was a problem on the buyers part but I am catagorically assured that there never was a problem. I am however told (by my conveyancing solicitor) that the company my buyer used has done this before. They are always extremely slow on these matters. As a result of their incompetance I have now lost the house I wanted to buy because the seller was sceptical about the mortgage offer from my buyer. I am extremely angry because it means I still have to pay £650 to my conveyancing solicitor for work they have completed on my behalf..with no house to show for it at the end.
To whom can I make a complaint and does anyone feel I have grounds to ask the mortgage company who were so slow with their offer for compensation?
By the way, I will name and shame. The name of the mortgage company is Rooftops Mortgages. I wouldnt advise anyone to touch them with a barge pole.
Penny

MortgageMamma

Rooftop are normally pretty good to be honest, I give them a lot of business and don't have any problems with them. did your buyer use a mortgage broker?

In your position, I would be making a complaint in writing to your estate agent as they should have qualified the buyer, continually checked progress on their mortgage and pushed for an exchange -they may well have done this I don't know the ins and outs of it, but I'd be suprised if you see you £650 back - this is just the property buying process for you

benjdr

Wow 5 months? How can any company move so slowly?
Maybe my process was a record breaker then...

Full application submitted to lender on a Thursday morning.
Mortgage In Principle out the same day and in letter box Friday morning
Valuer rang to get keys on Saturday, but obviously got turned away till Monday because EA didn't have vendor's permission.
Valuer completes valuation on Monday.
Formal Mortgage offer sent out Tuesday.
In my postbox on Wednesday.

Best of luck to you if you decide to take any action.

dunstonh

To whom can I make a complaint and does anyone feel I have grounds to ask the mortgage company who were so slow with their offer for compensation?

Too early to consider compensation. You dont know where the problem was. Put a complaint into Rooftop (or the broker if you used one - although you could get the broker to investigate on your behalf first). They will look into it and see if they are at fault or not. If they are not, you wont get anything but at least you will know what held it up. If they are at fault, you may get a small goodwill gesture of a couple of hundred quid.

loveandlight

Don't be so quick to assume/believe that the mortgage company is to blame. ( I mean that in a nice way). I would also not take as gospel what your conveyancing solicitor says. After all, how does he/she know for sure as they are not acting for your buyer but for you?

Exactly the same thing happened to us the year before last with our buyers. That took five months as well. However, after doing a bit more digging and demanding specific details, it turns out that our buyers had intentionally waited until everyone else in the chain had got their mortgages and surveys approved first, before they had even submitted their own mortgage application, as they didn't want to be the ones to lose any money if any part of the chain had broken down!! I was furious and like MortgageMamma has suggested, I went to our estate agents and complained to the manager as to why they had been so lax at qualifying our buyers. They admitted that they should have done a lot more.

(We had already lost £500 by this time as another house we had wanted to buy, fell through due to a low valuation). The stress we were under was intolerable and I am sure you are going through the same, so I do feel feel for you.

When they eventually did put in their mortgage appln, it took four weeks from start to finish!!

I have always felt some resentment towards our buyers for leaving everything to the last minute.

Next time we sell we don't want the same thing happening to us again, so we will not be taking our house off the market until our buyers have had their survey done first.

Good luck!