First Time Buyer Help Needed!!

Megaroo89

I wonder if anyone could please offer some advice...

Myself and my partner were recently in the process of buying a new build and have had a series of issues which have resulted in us having to cancel the purchase.

We went into the sales office following a viewing of a new build and advised them of our interest in the property. The developer recommended a mortgage adviser to us who we called then and there to see how much we could borrow. The mortgage adviser advised us that we could borrow up to £253,000 with assistance of Help to Buy with a 5% deposit (£10,000).

The sales adviser said that usually they would require a Mortgage in Principle before reserving a plot but as we'd been advised we could borrow such a high amount they were willing to waive this and we therefore put down a reservation fee of £500.

Over the following week we submitted payslips, account statements (partner is self-employed) etc. to the mortgage adviser and to our surprise we were told that in order to secure a mortgage we would need to put down an additional £4,500 making a total deposit £14,500.

We agreed to put down the additional monies and proceed with the purchase.

Before the mortgage application was submitted, the mortgage adviser said she required sight of my partner’s tax returns. We were in the process of collating this information when we were advised that our mortgage application had been submitted and the valuation fee was deducted from our bank account.

We assumed therefore that these details were not longer required.

My partner and I have an outstanding car & van loan as well as a credit card that we pay off monthly. We advised the mortgage adviser of this from the start. We were then contacted by the mortgage adviser that the bank required sight of all zero balances on outstanding credit accounts – as we had previously advised the mortgage adviser that this would not be the case for a good few months we were a bit confused and gave them a call to find out what was going on, we were told that it was part of the application process but they would advise the bank that these would not be zero balances on completion – we therefore asked for a copy of the mortgage application which was never provided to us.

A week later I received notification from the bank that they were refunding our valuation fee and consequently got a phone call from the adviser to say that our application had been declined due to a historic credit card in my partner’s name that had never been paid off and had subsequently been written off.

My partner, to his knowledge had never had a credit card with this particular bank nor had he had any outstanding debt written off. We therefore ran our own credit check which confirmed the same – my partner’s credit score was 985 out of 999!

We asked the mortgage adviser to investigate this and she said she would come back to us with details of alternative lenders.
We then got an email later on that day to say that an alternative lender would be prepared to give us a mortgage but only if we could put down a deposit of £30,000!! We were even asked whether or not someone in our family would be willing to gift the additional £15,000.

Unfortunately neither of our family has that kind of money.
We decided to seek alternative advice from a local mortgage adviser who had previously helped my parents with their mortgage.

He advised us to try and spend the next couple of months clearing as much of the credit card debt as possible and for my partner to get himself on the electoral role.

Following this meeting we made the decision to not go forward with the purchase and advised the developer of the same.

As both first time buyers and both very much inexperienced with mortgages, we feel that we should not have been encouraged to reserve and commit to buying a plot without the mortgage in principle, the mortgage adviser did not look after our best interests and consequently we have lost around £900 – thanks to the loss of the reservation fee and legal fees for aborting the purchase.

To add insult to injury, an acquaintance of ours is now buying our former plot and when she went into reserve the plot the sales advisor told her that we had our mortgage application declined due to a credit card!!

What we would like to know is; do we have any grounds for complaint here? Should the sales advisor have allowed us to reserve the plot without a mortgage in principle? Should we have seen the mortgage application before it was submitted? Did the mortgage adviser owe us some form of confidentiality before telling the developer our reason for being declined? As well, as the sales advisor also owing us some confidentially before passing those reasons on to a new buyer?

DCFC79

I believe the sales advisor is in wrong here, they shouldn't have divulge the reason to anyone else.

markin

Tell your friend not to use that useless recommended mortgage adviser.

[Deleted User]

I would get a copy of the initial discolsure document that was given to you before you agreed to use the brokers services. On there is a section for complaints contact details

Write this out and send it in and then ask how you can make a data protection complaint against the advisor for disclosing financial information to a 3rd party.

If all this stacks up i would be in big big trouble if this came through as a complaint.

I would not be submitting an application without a full record of my clients financial circumstances. If i cant get hold of loan and cc statements then credit report has all that info. If the broker has submitted the application to the lender and it doesnt match real circumstances then the lender may flag this as possibly fraudulent application.

You are justified in your anger in my opinion. I would certainly be raising a complaint asking for an explanation for what happened here. You can request a copy of your fact find, you should have a suitability report, request a copy of the advice notes on the case.

You got your deposit back on the new build i assume? Pretty sure they are refundable when help to buy is involved