Halifax taking their sweet time to offer

Two9A

Hi all. I'm buying my brother's property, and he'll be using the equity as a deposit on a new place; no problem there, but the limiting factor is what I feel to be incompetence on the part of my mortgage broker, which is the Halifax.

The underwriters of my application put the offer on hold since they had questions regarding my income and employment details. Of course, I was not informed of this, and only found out when I called to check the progress of the application. Having supplied the information requested, the application went to offer processing, who again put it on hold requesting income details (which were previously supplied). This isn't to mention the problems my brother has had, as Halifax (brokering his mortgage too) have lost two declaration forms. These delays of over 3 weeks are now causing problems, since the seller of my brother's new place is stating a deadline of Monday for resolution of the mortgage offer.

Seeing as I've paid the product fee for my mortgage, conveyancing and survey fees, do I have any recourse to reclaim these if Halifax's incompetence causes a delay past Monday, and I have to terminate the application?

cattie

You have no recourse whatsoever as the Halifax haven't yet decided to offer you a mortgage. In light of Northern Rock having been a little too lax with lending money too easily, it is responsible lending for Halifax to want to ensure you have the required income & employment history before agreeing to give you the mortgage.

In house buying & selling, nothing is legal until exchange of contracts between buyer & seller & the mortgage doesn't actually commence until completion & it's only then that you would have a legitimate claim against the lender if the funds were not made available due to an error on their part.