How long did it take to get your mortgage approved?

TrixA

We submitted our full mortgage paperwork on Friday, one week after having our offer accepted. We had approval in principle but it took a week to get an appointment with a mortgage manager to complete the full application. In the branch they told us we should receive a response within a week (so by this Friday), but the HSBC mortgage centre is saying they've yet to receive our papers and we shouldn't expect to hear anything until next week at earliest. In the meantime I've got the vendor's estate agent hassling me asking when they can expect the valuation survey and implying that we are much slower than the average buyer and the vendors are disappointed. He also suggested that HSBC are notoriously slow compared to other lenders.

Is this true? I'm worried we might lose the house if we aren't able to show some progress this week.

SG27

I also heard HSBC were slow when I bought my house early last year. Don't know if it is true.

We used YBS and had our offer 6 days after full application. But it can vary massively depending on the lender and your circumstances. Friends of mine made an application to nationwide 3 weeks ago an are still waiting.

benjus

We are in a similar position, although using a broker. It does sound like mortgage lenders are very busy at the moment - at least the Estate Agent is being quite understanding about it in our case...

kingstreet

I submitted a Halifax application on 21st and it was offered today.

Our average Nationwide case takes about a week from submission to offer.

TBH we underwrite our cases before we submit them, so we hardly ever get asked for anything we haven't already thought of and dealt with.

TrixA

Thanks, we went with HSBC because they were offering good rates and I thought the process might be more straight-forward since I'm already a customer of theirs. So much for that then.