Should I accept my mortgage before the results of my full survey?

Charlotte_abraham

Just looking for a bit of advice with regards to accepting my full mortgage offer or to wait.

As a bit of background....

I have accepted my agreement in principle.
Then atom bank sent somebody out to do their valuation on Monday! The results of this came back on Tuesday, which essentially said it was worth what we were paying for the property. So therefore we have had the mortgage offered to us.
We had previously agreed with our mortgage advisor that we would out source our own structural surveyor as she could recommend us one that would be cheaper than the one the bank would offer us. But Obviosuly we would not request for the surveyor to visit the property until the valuation had to been done to ensure we weren’t justv wasting our money.
So today (Thursday) our structural surveyor visited the property but we are yet to receive his report.
Both the solicitor and the bank are pushing for me to accept the mortgage but should I wait until the full structural survey is back? Also how long should I expect to wait for the report?

Many thanks in advance!

G_M

You will not be commited to the mortgage until you buy the property.


That means after Exchanging Contracts. The a day or two before Completion your solicitor will 'draw down' the money from your mortgage lender.


If you decide not to proceed with Exchange eg after your survey, or perhaps because your solicitor finds a legal problem, then no money will be drawn down and you will owe nothing.


At this stage, all you are saying is that you are still planning to use this lender.

YoungBlueEyes

How long you wait for the report is probably different with each surveyor, however I had mine back the next day. This was "quite quick" he assured me, but not uncommonly so.

However it's a bank holiday weekend coming up so that might skew things....

Hoploz

You don't normally have to 'accept' a mortgage offer before you're ready to actually buy.

Your solicitor will ask to see the detailed survey, as there is a duty to report findings to the lender, after all they are the ones taking the risk.

kingstreet

Accepting a mortgage offer does not make it legally binding on you.

You can still discontinue the application and/or the property purchase upto exchange of contracts in the case of the latter and completion for the former.