Estate agent keeps asking me questions...

john_white

Eejay wrote: »

Yes I attended the appointment with him and they included the fact we've a baby due next month too.

Even more puzzling then. If anything happens to your OH, you and baby can just be turfed out by the lender. You have signed a declaration saying you happy with this?


If you have nothing to do with the purchase why are you attending mortgage appointments? I can see why the EA is confused.

DaftyDuck

Without meaning to be offensive, given the confusion and concern you two have managed to sow on this thread, is it any wonder the EA is putting pressure on the pair of you? I'm also seriously concerned you may not have made all the complexities clear to the mortgage advisor: you may have a number of serious risks in that alone.

You've had an experienced mortgage advisor express his astonishment, at least three semi-professional property investors, and the general rabble like Dan-Dan and his life-love-partner MoneyIsTooShitToMention ALL express their incredulity at these goings-on.

I can't help but feel this house purchase would be one, were I involved, that I'd drop you like a stone, and find another buyer.

Mind you, I have previously told of selling an old property to "the woman who only walked backwards", so mebbe I'm not so hard-nosed! :rotfl:

john_white

Eejay wrote: »

Lol - thank you for the relationship advice! We have a joint account and a baby due next month. Just because a property is not in my name does not mean our marriage is in trouble. My husband doesn't have a massive income, but was fortunate that his family purchased our last property, so we don't need a massive mortgage this time. If we were to get the mortgage in both of our names, he'd have had to include all of my bills (food, Sky, mobile etc) and my income probably wouldn't count at all. It wasn't worth the risk. Even in our current rented property, I am classed as a 'permitted occupier' - they couldn't include me as a tenant because my only income is my student loan.

So let me get this straight. By having you on the mortgage effects your affordability, as you spend more than you earn? So keeping you off increases the chances / amount of the loan. So in effect you have just lied about the household expenditure to cheat the affordability checks.

Eejay

I wish I'd never started this thread - it's turned into such a ridiculous drama! It was somewhat amusing at first but now it's just stupid.

We haven't lied to anybody, so I'd rather not be accused of trying to cheat anything. We told the woman at the bank that my bills were in my name - they are. She said she wouldn't include them for that reason. She also didn't include my share of the food bill, but she did include things like council tax and the important bills that my husband would have to pay regardless of whether I was there or not. I get enough money to cover my bills, but it's money that wouldn't count towards something as serious as a mortgage. There's a difference between a mobile contract and buying a house! My husband gets money from letting his property out, but because it's not on a BTL mortgage (not something that needs discussing in this thread as it's irrelevant), that doesn't count towards his income either. They are quite strict about what they do and don't include, and we spent a good while going through everything in detail. There were absolutely no lies, and the woman appreciated the fact that I attended the appointment. Whether I went to the appointment or not should be of no concern to the EA because we have made it clear from the start that it is all in his name.

If anything were to happen to my husband, he has quite a few insurances that would likely cover the mortgage. He would also get a payout from work. I only have one year left at uni, so unless anything tragic happens to him in that time, then I will hopefully have a job and be able to sort the bills myself. Also, his family is also in a position to be able to pay the mortgage off if necessary so that the baby and I could continue to live there - but there's a good chance I'd consider moving nearer to family if such a situation arose. We have over £90,000 to pay towards the house anyway, so it's not as if we're only paying a small deposit and I'll be left with a huge mortgage.

Anyway, as for going too slowly - some people are saying we should stop completely and not go any further until the tenants are sorted out, whilst others are saying we should be way further ahead already. As explained several times, we told the EA when our mortgage appointment was right at the very start, and my husband had paid for the searches and assumed these had been done. From our end it seemed we had done everything right, so I think the main issue is a lack of communication. If the EA thought we should have had the searches done after the first week, why didn't they ring us in the second week to ask what the delay was? Instead we find out now that the solicitor is the one who has held them up without our knowledge - my husband emailed them this evening and got an automated 'out of office' response so that looks like it might not be sorted until Tuesday when she's back. She's also dealing with our other property, so it is starting to get a bit annoying that she's off so frequently and doesn't seem to have anyone covering. I can see now why they are getting annoyed, but we're not entirely to blame so I won't be losing any sleep over it.

Cissi

john_white wrote: »

Has the OP declared to the lender that they will be living at the property, but, will have no financial interest in it?

I don't think that's actually possible, since OP is married to the would-be house owner?

Anatidaephobia

Eejay wrote: »

I don't know why he keeps ringing me and asking me questions because I don't have a clue what the answers are to half of them. He wanted to know how our mortgage appointment went - I told him my husband had some paperwork to send off

Eejay wrote: »

I haven't had any involvement, and we've told them this. I told him to contact my husband about it but he seemed to still want a few answers from me.

I would imagine the reason the EA keeps calling you is because you keep answering the phone and answering his questions. If you wanted him to stop calling you, you needed to tell him the very first time he called you that you are NOT buying the house, it's your husband who is buying it and the EA should contact him instead. It was unfortunate that your phone number was given as a contact when you first booked the house viewing but that would've been fairly straight forward to resolve the first time the EA phoned you after that. I know that EA's can be difficult to deal with which is why it's important to be clear - however if you have been having little chats with them every time they phone up, I can completely see how they haven't gotten the message.

Anatidaephobia

Eejay wrote: »

I think the main issue is a lack of communication. If the EA thought we should have had the searches done after the first week, why didn't they ring us in the second week to ask what the delay was? Instead we find out now that the solicitor is the one who has held them up without our knowledge - my husband emailed them this evening and got an automated 'out of office' response so that looks like it might not be sorted until Tuesday when she's back. She's also dealing with our other property, so it is starting to get a bit annoying that she's off so frequently and doesn't seem to have anyone covering. I can see now why they are getting annoyed, but we're not entirely to blame so I won't be losing any sleep over it.

There does seem to have been a serious lack of communication and I think you and your husband need to recognise this and take steps to prevent it happening again. When we bought our house, we quickly realised that it was best to regularly make contact with both the EA and our solicitor in order to make sure the lines of communication were open and everything was progressing as we wanted it to.

I think it's naive to just sit back and wait for things to happen - then discover later than the things you thought were being done have not been done yet. It's understandable for a first time buyer to be naive but I would expect someone who has been through the process before to be more proactive, take some responsibility and keep on top of things.

Eejay

I think because everything went fairly smoothly with the sale of our flat that he just thought this one was going fine too - after all it's the same solicitor. However the EA for the other sale has been good at emailing for updates or problems along the way, however big or small, so my husband has been able to respond quite quickly on his breaks. In fact there was quite a significant hold up on the other place but my husband was at least made aware straight away and so could get onto it and start sorting it.

If this EA had a visible phone number I'd have ignored them. However I noticed last week that they and my health visitor both ring on a 'private number', so whilst I was tempted to ignore the call I thought I'd better not in case it wasn't who I thought it was. My husband asked them last week not to contact me but they said their system update meant that my number reappeared this week or something which is why they've done it again.

Eviesmummy

OP, I just wanted to say to that your situation isn't so unusual, I'm buying our new house in my name only. My husband and daughter will be living there too and we're a happy family!

What a lot of fuss!!!

Eejay

Eviesmummy wrote: »

OP, I just wanted to say to that your situation isn't so unusual, I'm buying our new house in my name only. My husband and daughter will be living there too and we're a happy family!

What a lot of fuss!!!

Thanks - glad we're not the only ones I didn't think it was that 'weird' until I posted on here and got accused of deceiving the bank etc! :rotfl: