Mortgage in underwriters hands

Anzhelka

Hello
This is the very first time I am visiting this forum and writing something, it's just that we are very worried about our mortgage application, as we need to move out within 1 months time and we are also going for holiday now, so need to get the decision very quick.
The situation is as follows - we are buying shared ownership house, just 35% of it which is around £60 000 and deposit we have is minimal 5% deposit. We have got decision in principle and valuation, now our application is with underwriters. I am getting really worried. Our income is enough to cover all bills and almost half of our wages is left over, so shouldn't be a problem with affordability. We have also car finance which I am paying 3 years all the time in time and never had any late payments. The only thing scares me is that my husband had in the last year some unplanned overdrafts for couple of days time, then quickly paid off everything. and he had this happening couple of times per last year, but his Experian score is still Excellent, mine is Good, because of couple of searches done on my file. we also have credit card, which is always paid off in full if we spend something. Our mortgage was declined once in the past with different lender because of overdraft limits, but this was a while ago, will underwriters be able to see that now? and also what our chances to pass and what can be the reason why we don't pass? our broker said that according to the info provided we have all chances. Sorry for such emotional post..we just found our perfect house to move in with our big family.

Anzhelka

And the mortgage advisor said that lender has done an "initial check" now on the full mortgage application and passed that to underwriters. are underwriters more strict or they just doing all checks and that's it? our mortgage is with Leeds by the way. With documents provided they are also happy so far...

rtho782

Underwriters are not more strict as such, but they may look in more depth.

For example, you might have had 5-6 payday loans paid on time last year. The automated check might just go "5-6 loans paid on time" and consider it positive. The underwriter might look and go "hmm, 5-6 month long loans of less than £500 each, those are payday loans, that shows financial difficulty, no way I will give them a mortgage"

If you've been honest with your broker, he should have a good idea of the criteria and I'd trust in him.

For reference, we've just gotten a mortgage offer on our first house, with nationwide. I bank with nationwide but have very little credit history, I only even had a bank account on my credit file as of about 18 months ago. I have had a credit card with Nationwide for ~5 months. That's it. I've never gone over my O/D etc. My partner was a student until recently so has some debt, a student overdraft that is still maxxed out, etc.

None of this was an issue and we got an over 200k mortgage at 95% with no issues.

Anzhelka

I just checked our credit report, we didn't have much credits and late payments, his only late payments were 60-72 months ago and it was unplanned overdraft on his bank account. he also had couple of times late for his pay monthly phone for 1 day, but this also was couple of years ago. we don't have any outstanding debts, apart from our car finance, which is paid all the time in time and it's only 8 months left to pay. little bit worried about deposit, as it's small, unfortunately we just found out that our current landlord selling house, so needed to move urgently and decided to try buying shared ownership, as tired of moving from house to house and the rent is £300 more than we would pay for the mortgage. And our deposit it's just a money on our current accounts.
Our broker did say that he can't see any reason of being refused, but you know how it is to wait...real panic. And I've also seen that lender and somebody else had been looking at our credit files YESTERDAY, can this mean that they have already checked our credit history and they are fine with it? as Broker has emailed yesterday evening, saying that Lender has done initial checks and have instructed valuation now, but this needs to be done the first thing I presume. what do "initial checks" mean?

rtho782

Sounds like they are probably fine with it, but there could still be issues. E.g. you might miss a payment before the offer comes through, or before completion, or they might decide they missed something, or the valuation might be way off what you were hoping, so you're not in the clear, but it looks positive to me.

I completely get moving rather than buying a landlord a house over 25 years, but you might need to be a bit careful as the time period for buying a house is so open ended that you might not be in it in time.

While me an my partner don't have any adverse credit, as mentioned, we are getting a big mortgage and my credit history is very "thin" to put it mildly.

I know it's scary, but I really would trust in the broker. They do this every day.

Anzhelka

We had before completely negative and lazy broker...so in comparison, this look absolutely fine and is quite positive. so fingers crossed...
there won't be any late payments during this time, as our financial situation is much improved now since the time we had those late payment...and everything goes by DD anyway, so there won't be any problems with payments right now, was just wondering how far in the past they will look into....

rtho782

They will look all the way back (6years), but how far back a late payment or an exceeded credit/od limit needs to be before it is a decline is a nebulous thing and different everywhere, every case is judged on it's own merit.

On the other hand, if you had defaulted on a mortgage I don't suppose it matters how far back it is they will probably decline!!

Anzhelka

it wasn't a mortgage, it was just some payments gone when there was no money on the bank account. it says it's 60-72 months ago. would we even get DIP with that if they wouldn't be happy? credit score is excellent and some late payments like this don't show on our credit file even....

Anzhelka

arghhh still no answer from underwriters....what does that mean? how long do they usually check? are there any limits in times of checking us? as we have very limited in time to get everything sorted, otherwise we may end up homeless...

Debtslayer

Why do you only have one month and you have to move out of your current place? Have you already been given notice?
I can't see any house purchase going through in a month, but I could be wrong!

Anzhelka

We had 2 months notice to leave our current property....however one month is already passed dealing with DIP, full application and other checks...so we have only 1 month left and we supposed to get an answer from underwriters yesterday, however they just came back that there was system error and valuation didn't happen in time, so now we have to wait another week or more....