Anxious FTB - what, when, and who?

CarrieVS

Current Progress:
- Mortgage offer received
- Survey booked
- Solicitor has written to me with queries about the source of my deposit.

I provided six months of statements for all my bank accounts along with my ID documents and other paperwork, but my solicitor has asked me for further explanation and evidence.

How far back do I need to go? I've been saving for many years and it would obviously be impractical for my solicitor to check every transaction on my accounts since I was a baby, even if I still had records for my entire life.

I've been asked for six months of statements and payslips as evidence if the source of funds is my salary, and that is the primary source and the only recent source, but six months would only cover a fraction of my savings.

I've had other sources of funds, including gifts, in the past, the most recent being four and a half years ago. Is this still relevant for anti-money-laundering purposes? Do I need to make my solicitor aware of it and if I do, will they have to make enquiries into where the donors got the money?

I don't want to unnecessarily complicate things. I'm confident that I could say "it's from my salary" and provide six months of evidence that I've been saving around £1000/month for a while, and it wouldn't be questioned, but I don't want to conceal anything that would be considered relevant.

chunkytfg

CarrieVS wrote: »

Current Progress:
- Mortgage offer received
- Survey booked
- Solicitor has written to me with queries about the source of my deposit.

I provided six months of statements for all my bank accounts along with my ID documents and other paperwork, but my solicitor has asked me for further explanation and evidence.

How far back do I need to go? I've been saving for many years and it would obviously be impractical for my solicitor to check every transaction on my accounts since I was a baby, even if I still had records for my entire life.

I've been asked for six months of statements and payslips as evidence if the source of funds is my salary, and that is the primary source and the only recent source, but six months would only cover a fraction of my savings.

I've had other sources of funds, including gifts, in the past, the most recent being four and a half years ago. Is this still relevant for anti-money-laundering purposes? Do I need to make my solicitor aware of it and if I do, will they have to make enquiries into where the donors got the money?

I don't want to unnecessarily complicate things. I'm confident that I could say "it's from my salary" and provide six months of evidence that I've been saving around £1000/month for a while, and it wouldn't be questioned, but I don't want to conceal anything that would be considered relevant.

I assume the Queries are requests for certain info? Just send them that as best as you can. :T

CarrieVS

chunkytfg wrote: »

I assume the Queries are requests for certain info? Just send them that as best as you can. :T

I provided six months of bank statements for all my accounts showing a total combined balance of seventy-odd thousand pounds. The request now is to provide "an explanation as to how the funds arrived in the account together with any evidence to support the same." With the example that if it's savings from wages, six months of bank statements and payslips would be sufficient evidence.

Most of it is from my salary and I don't doubt that if I never mentioned the gift I received four and a half years ago no-one would notice anything amiss or care to investigate that far back in my affairs. But if it would actually be relevant I don't want to commit fraud by concealing it. (The money is perfectly legitimate but I'd prefer if my parents didn't have to be investigated for money-laundering unless it's absolutely necessary.)

chunkytfg

CarrieVS wrote: »

I provided six months of bank statements for all my accounts showing a total combined balance of seventy-odd thousand pounds. The request now is to provide "an explanation as to how the funds arrived in the account together with any evidence to support the same." With the example that if it's savings from wages, six months of bank statements and payslips would be sufficient evidence.

Most of it is from my salary and I don't doubt that if I never mentioned the gift I received four and a half years ago no-one would notice anything amiss or care to investigate that far back in my affairs. But if it would actually be relevant I don't want to commit fraud by concealing it. (The money is perfectly legitimate but I'd prefer if my parents didn't have to be investigated for money-laundering unless it's absolutely necessary.)

If they are not asking for anything specific other than logging onto your online banking and printing off as far back as you can bank statements i'd suggest ringing your Solicitor monday morning and asking them what they actually want from you?

I thought The anti money laundering rules were more about due diligence on the Solicitor to ensure they feel confident they can say the money has come from a proper source. Not to account for every single penny!

We had to provide 3 months worth of statements for each of our savings accounts and that was it. nothing more.

CarrieVS

Current progress:
- Mortgage offer received
- Survey report received
- Answers to solicitor's queries re: funds accepted
- Trying to locate reliable tradespeople to quote on one or two issues

The survey report makes for alarming reading at first glance but I'd read on other people's posts how normal it is - the only "reds" are the standard "we didn't test gas/electric/gas fire" (I was told it was an electric fire, so that was a mild surprise, but not a problem.) Tons of orange but only two small issues I didn't know about, a couple I did, and the standard sea of "we couldn't check X" and "in a property of this age and type Y is possible" with no sign of anything being wrong.

Current question:
It seems we're up to the point of waiting on solicitors to get things done. I'm just worrying about whether the amount of progress and feedback I'm not seeing is typical or if I should be chivvying mine more frequently. I have no wish to be a problem client, but I'm getting antsy at not knowing more.

- Last Thursday (31 Jan) the cheque I gave them for searches etc. cleared.
- Last Friday (1 Feb) I followed up on my response to his queries and we exchanged a couple of emails for additional information and he seemed to be satisfied.

Yesterday I sent him the survey report and took the opportunity to ask, was everything going smoothly, did he need anything from me, and could he possibly give me a rough estimate of when he'd expect searches back (mainly hoping to find out if he'd ordered them yet.)

He replied that he's still awaiting contract paperwork from the vendor's solicitor (draft contract I presume he means, but he didn't say draft) and would follow up on the "Issues for your legal advisors" section after that. Didn't answer my question about searches at all.

- Should I expect searches to have been ordered by now? (Two weeks after returning my paperwork, ID, cheque etc, several working days after the cheque cleared, but not received the draft contract.)
- Given the seller is keen on a quick sale, and had solicitors lined up before accepting the offer, how soon would be typical for sending the draft contract?
- My solicitor doesn't seem to give progress reports unless I ask - how frequently is acceptable before I risk becoming an annoyance?

Monkeysocks42

Did you only start this process when you posted the first comment on this thread? If so I would suggest that you probably need to calm down as it's only been 2 1/2 weeks! The majority of conveyancing transactions take at least 2 months from start to finish. If your seller was expecting anything quicker then he should have found himself a cash buyer who was prepared to instruct a solicitor not to carry out any searches or checks. With regards to the draft contract being issued, yes you would have expected this to have been sent by now but it's not unusual that it hasn't been. Just because the seller had instructed his solicitor it doesn't mean he had already completed any required paperwork that is normally included with the draft contract in a "pack". Just ask the EA to contact the seller or his solicitor to find out when this is likely to be sent.

CarrieVS

Thanks, Monkeysocks

I'm not exactly panicking, I've just never done this before so I'm not sure exactly when and in what order everything is supposed to happen. I'm certainly not expecting the whole process to be done any day now!

Monkeysocks42

There are lots of useful guides online as to the house buying process. Just type "conveyancing process for first time buyers" into Google. You won't even need to make that trip to the library. :-)

Lokolo

You definitely sound like you are panicking. Checking in with your solicitor once a week is enough.

Searches will take 2-3 weeks depending on how busy the local council is. A mortgage offer will take a week or so AFTER the survey.

If the vendor's solicitors haven't sent a draft contract, I wouldn't be spending much more money. The draft contract will likely take a few weeks whilst the vendor gets everything in order to solicitor.

CarrieVS

Monkeysocks42 wrote: »

There are lots of useful guides online as to the house buying process. Just type "conveyancing process for first time buyers" into Google. You won't even need to make that trip to the library. :-)

Believe me, I have. They do not answer my questions. They say things like how long the overall process takes on average. They are absolutely no help when it comes to working out which part of the process should happen before or after which other parts.

What I mean is, things like whether I should expect my solicitor to order searches immediately after I pay for it, or not until they receive the draft contract. No guide I can find gives any hint whatsoever about that sort of detail, but without knowing, I don't know when I need to chase things up and when I just need to wait patiently.

I'm not panicking, I'm just trying to avoid the possibility of waiting months to find out that something hasn't been done that could have been started long before if I had known that it should be done and chased it up. Or waiting weeks for someone to do something only to find out they were waiting for me to do something first. I will stop using this forum to try and find out, however, since it's clearly an imposition.

Thanks for your patience and all your answers so far. It's much appreciated.