Halifax Amended Mortgage Offer

powertome

This is my first post, so apologies if these kind of questions have been answered before.

Oru bank made a mortgage offer last week on a property my wife and I are buying after due valuation. The bank's valuation came out to be the same as the agreed price. I commissioned my own building survey considering that the house was over 100 years old and the valuation came out lesser than the agreed price. I have since spoken to the vendor and they have agreed to lower the price midway of the difference between old offer and building survey valuation.

After discussions with our solicitor and MA, we decided not to go for an amended mortgage offer as this might take time. Only now our solicitor wouldn't agree, suspecting that the property might be overvalued from the lender's perspective. As a result, we have now been forced to get an amended mortgage offer.

My questions are:
1. Can my solicitor influence the bank's decision, ie, can he tell them that the building survey has valued it lower than the bank's valuation and that they should be careful about lending to me? Which valuation would the bank take into account?
2. I see that a credit check was done on my experian account yesterday. Does that mean that the amended mortgage offer is in the process of being issed? How long does this usually take after this addtional credit check?

gazfocus

powertome wrote: »

This is my first post, so apologies if these kind of questions have been answered before.

Oru bank made a mortgage offer last week on a property my wife and I are buying after due valuation. The bank's valuation came out to be the same as the agreed price. I commissioned my own building survey considering that the house was over 100 years old and the valuation came out lesser than the agreed price. I have since spoken to the vendor and they have agreed to lower the price midway of the difference between old offer and building survey valuation.

After discussions with our solicitor and MA, we decided not to go for an amended mortgage offer as this might take time. Only now our solicitor wouldn't agree, suspecting that the property might be overvalued from the lender's perspective. As a result, we have now been forced to get an amended mortgage offer.

My questions are:
1. Can my solicitor influence the bank's decision, ie, can he tell them that the building survey has valued it lower than the bank's valuation and that they should be careful about lending to me? Which valuation would the bank take into account?
2. I see that a credit check was done on my experian account yesterday. Does that mean that the amended mortgage offer is in the process of being issed? How long does this usually take after this addtional credit check?

Welcome to the forum. The thing to remember is that the solicitor is working for you AND your mortgage lender. Anything you tell them can be fed back to Halifax if it is likely to affect them.

Personally I would have just told the solicitor that you'd agreed a reduction due to work needing to be done and would not have mentioned the lower valuation.

Leon_W

If the purchase price has changed you'll need an amended mortgage offer to reflect that.


One for instance. You're borrowing 75% of the purchase price, say 75k against a house costing 100k. The price you pay changes (doesn't matter what the reason) down to 99k. You would now be borrowing 75k against £99k ie: a loan to value of 75.75% . Effectively this puts the property in perhaps a different risk category to the lender or the mortgage was only available up to 75% and not above. Just a for instance.


Your solicitor is correct therefore. If the purchase price changes then he must inform the lender.


Your survey has nothing to do with it. Just the change of purchase price.

powertome

Thanks gasfocus. That is exactly what I told my solicitor and he then started probing on the kind of work needing to be done and whether I have done a building survey. I had to disclose the building survey and guess what? He wanted a copy of the survey. He understands that the vendor would not want to reduce the price to match the valuation, but he still wanted me to go for the amended mortgage. Now I am worrying myself sick.

powertome

Leon_W wrote: »

Your solicitor is correct therefore. If the purchase price changes then he must inform the lender.


Your survey has nothing to do with it. Just the change of purchase price.

Thanks Leon W. Again I completely understand. I don't have a problem with that. It is just that we didn't want to change the purchase price after considering that it might delay the process. Anyway, my MA has asked for the amended mortgage offer.

Do you think the bank might take into account my independent building survey at all?

powertome

I should also add that there were no efforts to conceal the actual purchase price. We simply decided to forgo the price reduction, because it was only 0.6% and in the greater scheme of things it didn't matter.

Leon_W

The building survey you instructed has nothing to do with the solicitor. There was no need to inform them that you even had one done.


The mortgage valuation was done which the lender was obviously happy with. The only other thing they would need to know is if the purchase price changes and I'm very surprised your mortgage advisor didn't know that. It's very much a mortgage advisor basic that if the purchase price changes you will need an amended offer.