Please help! advice needed on re-mortgage problems

FourStars

Hi everyone. I’m hoping someone can give me some advice as I’m feeling quite lost at the moment. It’s a bit of a long one so I apologise in advance.

Two years ago my wife and I moved into a new build property which we purchased for £155,000. We had a two year fixed rate mortgage, arranged via the builders recommended broker with Santander at 3.89%. As that deal is coming to an end in December I phoned Santander to see what other deals would be available to us.

To my surprise Santander would only offer me rates of 4.69%. As we had no issues with late payments etc. I was surprised that the rates would go up so much in the current market, so we decided to contact the broker we had previously used to try to find us a new deal elsewhere.

The broker found us a deal with Nationwide at 3.24% so naturally our current lender wanting to charge so much more than that we decided to go that route. We went to see the Broker and paid a £295 fee for their services and paid a £99 booking fee to Nationwide. At this point the problems started.

Firstly when filling out initial documentation we were told to provide both our regular salaries and any other regular overtime or other payments. As part of my job on top of my wage I get a shift allowance and an on call payment every month, so these were included in the details passed to Nationwide.

As standard I had passed my last three months pay slips over to the broker to provide to the lender for evidence. A few days later I received a phone call from the broker telling me that Nationwide were not willing to accept my shift allowance/on call payments as a regular part of my salary, the only way this could be rectified was to get a payment reference from my employer. After about a week of issues with Nationwide trying to contact my employer this was finally sorted and they agreed to accept my initial submission that these were in fact regular payments as part of my employment.

However as soon as this was sorted I was then told that the valuation that Nationwide had instructed on my property had come back with a value of £145,000 and as such they would only be willing to lend several thousand pounds less than the initial agreement. This again came as a shock, while I don’t claim to be an expert on the housing market I do know that house prices have gone up over the past two years, and that my house was unlikely to have lost £10,000 in value during that time.

I checked with the usual online sources (Zoopla and Rightmove) and that confirmed that over the past two years, house prices in my area have risen an average of 6.29% in that period. My house is kept in excellent condition and I have no reason to believe it should have lost value in this time.

The broker sent a challenge to this valuation in, but that was rejected due to not supplying needed comparables, I then asked to challenge this valuation and was told that I would need to provide the following within 7 days for it to even be considered;

 2 comparable properties sold within the last 180 days (please note for new build properties a mixture of both new and second hand properties must be provided and must be supported by the disclosure of incentives form so that full consideration can be given)
 Full address of both properties
 Property type(must be the same as subject property)
 Number of bedrooms
 Distance from subject property(must be with in 0.5miles)
 Condition of property
 Date of sale
 Source of information of sale
 Sale price

I immediately pointed out that the first item on the list was an impossible ask, while a property exactly the same as mine had sold 5 months ago for £160,000 in no way do I have access to documents showing private dealings between that house buyer and the builder, nor could I get them. As I said at the time I can no more provide that than I can provide their pin number!

Add onto that that my estate is a mix and match of lots of different types of houses (which was part of the attraction), there are only 12 properties like mine on the estate and as such there isn't such a high turnover of owners that two would be likely to be even put up for sale in any one six month period.

As the list was seemingly flawed, and asked for the number of bedrooms in the property (an odd question if the house is supposed to be identical) I instead sent evidence of some smaller detached properties (built in the 90s), with the same number of bedrooms which had recently sold for £165,000 and £208,000 thinking their higher value was a fair reflection of them being detached, but still showing that my house was unlikely to have lost value.
I also passed on details of the house that sold for £160,000 and made a note of the last house to sell like mine prior to that in 2012 which sold for £156,000. I asked specifically with this in mind for them to quantify how my house could be worth less than it was two years ago with all this evidence to the contrary.

This has been sent on to Nationwide now and I am awaiting a reply, but fully expect to have their impossible list quoted back to me as they shut me out again.

I told my broker how unhappy I was with the treatment I’d had from Nationwide so far and at this point how I’d basically given up on getting a mortgage with them but I feel that Nationwide should refund me the £99 I paid as I had been open and honest and come to them in good faith and in my opinion been treated very unfairly from the moment I gave them any money.

The broker then surprised me by trying to argue that it wasn't Nationwide I had issue with but instead it’s the surveyor. I countered that I had dealt with and paid Nationwide, not the surveyor so I was within my rights to feel that they are at fault. I did agree to contact the surveyor myself directly which I did on Friday morning via email, as of yet I've had no reply.

I asked the broker what the next steps were as at this point my only dealings with Nationwide would probably be to try to get a return of the money paid out to them, so would they start looking for another deal for me now?

The broker then to my surprise said that she had been looking just that morning and actually the best deals were now with Santander (my current lender). I asked if she would move ahead and get those details and we could start looking to get something sorted at which point she told me that Santander won’t deal with her because I have an existing deal with them, so I’d have to go to them myself.

As I doubt the Broker even gets to see the deals for existing customers, this smacks to me like the broker is now also trying to cut me loose, meaning I’m out £400 with absolutely nothing to show for it. So my question is what do I do?

• Continue to chase Nationwide and try to recover fees from them?
• Should I attempt to recover fees from the broker as the deal didn’t go through? I’m sure they’d argue this didn’t fall apart due to them, but in my mind it certainly wasn’t due to me either.
• Should I chase the surveyor and try to gain compensation that way
• Or do I simply have to swallow this cost and just stick with Santander (regardless of what rates they offer) for fear of more money being thrown away?

This whole situation has been causing me massive stress the past few weeks so I’d really appreciate some advice from anyone in the know, as I really don't know how to proceed.

kingstreet

I'm sorry, but I just don't have the time, nor the inclination to read all that.

Newbuilds lose their "newbuild premium" for a few years, so it's possible for your home to actually be worth less, if the comparables (sold prices of similar property in vicinity (less than 0.5 miles) in last 120 days) don't indicate otherwise.

Santander customer retention products are based on estimated value, using a desktop valuation model.

If there was a doubt over valuation, a lender offering a "free valuation/legals" product would be your best bet.

Paying an up-front fee to broker was a risk. What agreement did you sign concerning fees/refunds?

ethank

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but unlikely you are getting any fees back.