Overseas Gifted deposit

Hannah111107

Hello, Can anyone help please?

My husband and I are applying for our first mortgage with Skipton BS and we are using HTB equity loan as well.

We have savings of £18000 separated on three accounts, on one of those accounts we have £9000 gifted deposit from my father who's living overseas (we've sent his gift letter and 6 months of bank statements to our solicitor and she was alright with it all)

we need £16000 as %5 deposit
and £7000 SD+legal fees

everything was going smoothly we even received an offer from them, until our solicitor called to tell us that Skipton doesn't accept overseas funds

we have no idea what to do now!

is it possible to tell the solicitor to take the deposit from our savings and take the SD and legal fees from the gift deposit?

In the offer we have from skipton they state that they don't require a gift statement if the amount is less than £5000, if we do that will they still want to know where the money came from?

We waited 3 weeks to get the offer and applying with another lender might cost us the house we want! any advice would be much appreciated.

betmunch

If you had £18000 in you savings why did you say there was a gifted deposit?

If you had a gift from abroad why did you apply to Skipton in the first place?

I'd explain to the solicitor the deposit is from your 18k, but it might be too late now

Hannah111107

The gifted deposit was already in my account and the solicitor asked where it came from and she requested the letter from my father anyway saying she'll ask for the whole amount (deposit+SD and legal fees) as a bulk when we exchange contracts.

As for applying with skipton in the first place, we've applied through a broker and explained the whole situation to him and he said that won't be a problem!!!

betmunch

Then I would put it on him to sort out. Skipton will not accept deposit from abroad, he needs to show them you had enough of your own money

Hannah111107

Thank you for your reply, to be honest we're quite upset he didn't know that in the first place but any solution rather than looking for a new lender would do.

we've spoken to him yesterday and he said he'll contact them and get back to us but we'll have to wait till Monday to hear anything back.

we're also worried that our solicitor will insist on transferring the money to her as a bulk and it might cause a problem with Skipton.

betmunch

It should have been checked with Skipton first. If it was and he said it'll be fine then it will be fine, and your solicitor is causing an issue for no reason.

If it wasn't checked, and its not fine then your broker has let you down.

This of course assumes you told him everything about your deposit money

Hannah111107

We've told him everything at the first meeting along with the bank statements to prove it but we don't know if he's checked with them before applying, we really hope he did and there's a way out of this mess!

Again thanks alot, much obliged for your help.

betmunch

I would have checked if it was me.

I think they would be fine with it, but you never know, hence why I would check