Santander refuse to mortgage

TheKeymeister

This is a shade worrying for me, my buyers exchanged but neither them nor their solicitor noticed the homebuyer's report had mentioned a door not fitting properly in the door frame (it was a badly fitting piece of architrave, on a door fitted in a stud wall) and there was a clause at the bottom of Santander's mortgage offer requiring a structural survey to be carried out and submitted because of this.

The structural engineer was round on Thursday and passed it all off as fine, I even forwarded him a picture of the stud wall under construction to include in his report, but I'm now going to have a few sleepless nights about whether they will accept this report, and if my buyer can't complete, I can't complete on my purchase, and so on and so forth....

Sounds like Santander must have been stung on a house with structural issues recently then!

Davesnave

Garethr123 wrote: »

So I phone Santander today, they tell me that the report is not sufficient and I need to submit a full report which is approximately 29 pages in length. This is not what I needed to hear. After shedding out £1000+ on surveys, I can no longer afford to have a full building survey despite the vendor offering to help.

Are Santander being fully unreasonable?

I'll be calling Monday to get to the bottom of this and see what they want from me.

As long as they are being non-discriminatory as race, sex, religion etc, Santander can impose whatever conditions they like on lending, whether these are 'reasonable' or not.

You've already said what they want from you and added:

"After shedding out £1000+ on surveys, I can no longer afford to have a full building survey despite the vendor offering to help"

So, it has to be asked, is this property which is "in need of renovation" right for you anyway?
Renovation almost always results in considerable unexpected costs, especially if the property, or parts of it, were not built well in the first place. Many a person has optimistically bought a doer-upper, only to find a few years down the line that their time, energies and uncommitted money are insufficient to make decent headway.

I'm not saying that's you, but if you shy at the first fence....

csgohan4

Bit worrying, you can no longer afford another survey. Do you have the money for solicitors/SDLT and spare money in case of emergencies?

buglawton

marksoton wrote: »

Then i'd be going to a broker with all information and getting them to sort a more suitable lender.

You can't re-use an existing survey with a new lender. I think that is what puts op in a quandary. The valuation and offer price on this one needs reducing.

TheKeymeister

Just a thought, did you get a structural engineer to just carry out a structural defect report (where they look into what's causing a specified defect, in your case the crack), or a structural/building survey? I know the defect report is somewhat cheaper, as it only looks at one thing rather than the whole building, and I can see the lenders point if this is what you had done - if there's a perceived problem in one place, what's to say there's not any further problems elsewhere?

Garethr123

Just to settle the story, we have £45000 in places. That's a 15% deposit, £5500 stamp duty,£1000 in fees and £16,500 for the renovation work of which it has new boiler etc and electrics.

k3lvc

buglawton wrote: »

The valuation and offer price on this one needs reducing.

But that isn't going help - Santander aren't saying they don't agree with the valuation but are saying that they won't lend at all without the structural details in place

Garethr123

The house is worth £195000 when the renovation is carried out (only requiring 15000 to do this) so property value is of no issue. As stated above its the structural details that are the hold up.

Thrugelmir

Garethr123 wrote: »

Sorry so what I mean is the solicitor has back all searches, permissions to exchange, contracts from the vendor etc. The offer and mortgage are the holdups.

Mortgage offer is the first thing that should be obtained before committing money. Santander won't have advised your solicitor of their requirements yet.

-taff

If they asked you for a full structural survey, then that's what they want.
You can't negotiate to give them what you want...either you get it done and borrow or you don't.