House I'm buying is unmortgageable!!

halesowenmum

Doozergirl wrote: »

Was the house a newbuild? Or just one of a few refurbs?

It may not be under FENSA if the work was comprehensive. A builder would end up paying twice if there is other certifiable work.

http://www.dudley.gov.uk/resident/planning/building-control/view-and-search-applications/

The three properties were new builds entirely.

Doozergirl

halesowenmum wrote: »

The three properties were new builds entirely.

Then why are they asking for FENSA?! the entire new building will have been signed off for building regulations otherwise you wouldn't have a mortgage on this one either!

A Fensa certificate is a bypass for building regs and is *inferior* to a building control completion certificate. Windows aren't so super special that builders go to the effort of having everything inspected and then get a Fensa certificate as well. The windows will be inspected as part of the build.

The reason for Fensa is that it is such a common home improvement that fitters can be registered as competant to fit building regs compliant windows and register the installation. Whether they do or not is never actually confirmed!

What an utter shower of !!!!!! you are dealing with.

halesowenmum

Doozergirl wrote: »

The contract rate only applies after exchange! I presume you would be pulling out before then or the whole deposit is forfeitable as well as other things.

Pulling out is obviously the last thing that I want to do but I need to be very clear in my understanding of the ramifications/ risks/how that would affect me at each point along the way, if I felt I had no choice but to stay put. I literally fear being rendered homeless - the only properties to rent are £200 a month more than my current mortgage so not even affordable anyway.

Doozergirl wrote: »

If completion is delayed for some reason then the rate is Barclays base - so 0.5% (presumably) plus 4%. 4.5% per annum on the entire purchase price, divided by 365 for the daily rate.

Ok, thanks. I hope my calculations are right as it looks like about £15 a day....

Their covering letter clearly states "By signing and returning these documents you will not be legally bound to sell your property. You will only be bound when contracts are exchanged - we will not exchange contracts without your instruction to do so". So hopefully I can proceed with this paperwork without having to go into a total panic.

StumpyPumpy

halesowenmum wrote: »

The three properties were new builds entirely.

I didn't realise that. I was assuming that your solicitors knew what they were doing when they asked for a FENSA! Bad assumption on my part. Do your solicitors know they are dealing with a new build? It is probably just a small mistake, but as I'm a suspicious type, I would start questioning the validity of anything else they ask for.

SP

halesowenmum

Well, thought it was time to update on this sorry tale of me trying to buy the little house of my dreams!

No joy pursuing a complaint through Financial Services Ombudsman (as expected) vis a vis various issues with how Virgin Money have gone about their conclusions and them not being willing to discuss that there's a pre-existing survey that highlights no problems at all. No options to get a mortgage from a different lender as I've not got the length of Ltd accounts needed. The single leaf internal wall is not going to magically go away as an issue and presumably neither is the requirement from Virgin to rebuild both stories in cavity construction at huge expense.

I advised my buyer that having exhausted all avenues it's 99.9% likely I will have to withdraw from the sale of my house. My buyer of course still wants to buy from me. Desperately. He wants to avoid wasted solicitors fees (me too) and has therefore asked if I would rent until May when I might be looked upon more favorably by lenders when I will have a year's accounts to be able to show them. They have offered to contribute towards my rent until May. I have already said there's no guarantee I'd get the mortgage then, no guarantee it wouldn't be turned down at survey again. And of course despite anything the vendors of the property I want to buy might say/promise, there's no guarantee that they would keep the property available 'for me' and not for example put it back into rental again (which in all reality, I think this is what they're going to end up having to do if I can't buy it cos if I can't buy it, no one else is likely to be able to as the construction is always going to be a problem).

In opting to rent (if one went with their suggestion) my outgoings would go up £200 a month above what they are now plus I'd have to pay back the early repayment fees of about £2k.

I also feel it might be rather negative also to walk away from my current mortgage and have to re-enter the market afresh.... my existing lender was the only one willing to lend to me so that might be a very significant loss if I went off and started renting. However, on the flip side, having once had a survey saying 'it's single leaf', if they then got one from a different surveyor that said 'it's not single leaf there's nothing to worry about', would they really go with that, or default to the previous survey which said it wasn't ok? (Do you see what I mean?).

I feel it offers more advantages for my buyer if we went down the me renting street as he would be able to go ahead and move in, but for me, I've got additional costs, the risks re my mortgageability if I ditch my current mortgage/lender, I'm stuck in a rented house that's horrible, and at the end of it even if it were possible to get a mortgage through a different lender I would still need to find out whether the survey would go through or not and there's no guarantee of that (since it is highly possible it could even be the same surveyor as before).

So I don't think this offer as thoughtful and positive to try and keep things moving as it is, is going to fly. It's just too much expense and risk for me for what, ultimately, is a house that may never have a mortgage on it again in its lifetime.

Thoughts?

StumpyPumpy

You'd be crazy to agree to the rental thing. Tell your buyer that you are pulling out of the sale but that if your position improves in May and you find yourself able to get a mortgage that he will be the first to know that you have put your place back on the market.

SP

moneyistooshorttomention

I thoroughly disagree with letting buyers down normally - a deal is a deal.

In this case though it does sound like you are genuinely in the position of having to do so due to no fault or choice of your own. You've not just changed your mind on a personal whim (which is not acceptable conduct imo). You've been forced into the situation where there is Nasty Big Fact there unexpectedly on the table re the house you had agreed to buy and I think you don't have any option but to stick to the status quo ante from what you say.

Obviously, if you find another house without this sort of problem - then tell your buyer they will be the first to know about it and the deal will be back on re selling your existing house to them.

halesowenmum

Yes, I think you're right, I can't do this renting option. My initial reaction was ugh no.

I guess I have to figure out if in order to get my costs back for wasting time trying to buy a house that it turns out is unmortgageable ie solicitors, house selling fees etc, I might look into pursuing a claim against the original surveyor thru RICS. Without his survey in which he highlighted no construction issues, I wouldn't have made a second attempt to buy it.

The daft thing is, I think the first survey is actually the more realistic of the two despite it 'missing' the single leaf.

Folk can say well the lending criteria haven't changed but it's clear that something has changed; whether it's the lending criteria themselves or as I suspect they are being interpreted/acted on in a totally black and white way which they clearly weren't being acted on before. There's enough examples on here of people who have bought their house happily 5 years ago and now try to sell it to find their potential buyers can't mortgage it. I must say I'm absolutely 100% all for due diligence with the lenders but this is a pretty crazy situation. If you look in my area all the houses between say £90k and £110k are all 1800s/1900s brick built slate roofed terraced houses so clearly all very likely to have single leaf somewhere in them.

What makes me laugh but not really is that if this single leaf is so "dangerous" how come it's ok for rental tenants to go into these homes and live in them? Don't they matter? All this will lead to in the next 10 or 20 years is a whole raft of houses (in this case for me, the only ones I can afford) that are completely unavailable to any potential purchasers, likely going down and down in condition as no landlord is going to fork out £8-10k to rebuild walls that are standing perfectly happily.

If I did go to a complaint through RICS do I need to do it through my solicitor or just directly myself, what do you think my chances are, what costs could I recover and would my solicitors fees be included if I used one?

lincroft1710

Unless you have asked every lender and they have all said no, you cannot claim your house is unmortgageable. As you did not buy the house at the time of the survey, you did not suffer any loss because of it. The survey is now 2 years old and can no longer be relied upon.

bildersfriend

Im a structural builder and find it impossible for a Surveyor to miss this. My initial reaction is its not a single brick wall and you really need someone competent to determine this which really is very simple. Where in the Country are you? Because single brick properties are really only found in the North of England or Cornwall. Never seen one in the South East!