Barclays Mortgage Application £2000 wasted what now ?

meacynic?

This is long but bear with me, I need Help !

2 months ago we had an offer accepted on a house (c£250,000 against asking c£270,000) and applied to Barclays for a Mortgage at 75% LTV, for which they took 'an arrangement fee' (c£500) the moment we signed the papers.

Taking their advice we opted for the more comprehensive 'full building survey' valuation, as it's an old house (c1885-1890) and we want make some major alterations to it.

The 'Full Building Survey' (c£1000) did not provide a valuation, instead it insisted we took out further Structural, damp and electrical surveys and got quotes for remedial work, which we did from other qualified companies (c£800). Structural Engineer found nothing wrong, Electrician said it needed remedial work to be satisfactory, Damp Report gave a quote for a DPC as houses built in our area at that time did not have them. Total cost for these works - DPC and Electrical was c£1700.

We communicated with the Bank and Survey Company many times throughout this process, an arduous task, with the Bank saying they could not make an offer without a valuation, and the surveyor saying he could not make a valuation without the reports, and on Monday we were able to send those reports.

The Surveyor then insisted that he would only value the property on the basis that the works were done - ie its' worth £250000 if you spend £1700, otherwise it doesn't have a value !! An obviously ridiculous statement.

Chasing with Barclays, we were told it's with the underwriter, and has been fast-tracked, Today 3 days later, we make a call to their call centre to chase, the underwriter has referred to a senior underwriter, and the decision is that they are happy to lend us the money, once the works are done to their satisfaction and the house has been re-surveyed (for which no doubt I would also be charged) to their satisfaction... a policy which they apparently introduced on July 1st while our application was in process.

Now, Am I missing something here, or there some other version of reality that surveyors and bankers operate in ?

the Bank will only lend me the money to buy the house, if either the seller has the work done before I buy it; Or I buy it - using the spare cash I keep under the mattress, for just such emergencies - pay to have the work done, pay you for another survey, and then ask for the money ? IF I could afford to buy it with the money I already have, why would I put myself through the pain of dealing with the Bank and surveyors in the first ?

PLEASE tell me that nobody else on here thinks they're being reasonable !

So, what do I do now ?

Pull out of the purchase, let the vendors down, and lose the house we really want ?

Apply somewhere else for a mortgage and hope the vendors, and their vendors, etc, etc are prepared to wait ?

Complain to Barclays and try to get my money back ? Complain to the survey company, try to get my money back ?

Graham

tyres

why not reduce your offer on the house, tell the seller how much the costs for repairs are going to be and either get them to fix it, or negotiate a counter offer...

by the way, who did you use for your surveys?

amnblog

Why can the vendor not get the essential works done - then you progress?

meacynic?

I knew the house would need some updating when I offered low on it, and they accepted that. I dont think it wold be morally right to go back and offer even less, plus the position of the Surveyor would be unchanged - it's worth £0.0 until the work is done.....

The vendor isn't going to rip their home apart and do the work before they sell it to me, it would make a mess of the home that they've been happy living in for the past 50 years, with no guarantee fo a sale even then, as Barclays/Woolwich will only make me the offer when the work is done, and could just as easily change their mind.

Someone asked who did the survey; Not sure I should name names on here, lets just say it's the one that I thought Woolwich insisted we use, though I now find I could have gone anywhere for MY Survey and they would have just got their own valuation from this outfit, which appears to use sub contractors up and down the country - ours came from ~30 miles away, what he knows about property prices in my town I have no idea..

We could see from the start where this was going wrong, but were unable to get anyone at Barclays, Woolwich or Survey comapny to acknowedlge the problem and correct it - the two surveys should have been requested, and they should be handled spearately,; I think they only requested our survey, not the valuation, and so tried to back track and caused this mess.

I will be taking legal advice, to see if we can show correct rpocess was not followed - it would happen to me in my job, so I assume these people can be held to account too.