Natwest Mortgage - can loan value be adjusted whilst still pending?

Irishsmurfy

Hi all

Need a little bit of advice please from those who have experience with Natwest mortgages.

My 2 sons applied for a joint mortgage with Natwest Bank in October 2019. They both work a lot of overtime usually but hadn't done any in July or August which was reflected in their August and September payslips. (This was due to a family bereavement and also a 3 week holiday abroad).

When they applied for their mortgage the Natwest advisor said they could only apply based on their basic wage plus allowances (London allowance and shift work allowance) but no overtime would be considered as 2 months had zero values - unless we wanted to submit the figures higher up the Natwest chain and wait for underwriters to decide. Their overtime amounts to approx £20k per year. However the sellers of the house they want to buy were supposedly very nervous sellers as they'd had a previous sale fall through so they wanted to see the mortgage offer in place immediately. Due to this my sons decided to use 100% of their available funds (£146k) as their deposit against a house price of £365k which gave them a mortgage of £219k. Ideally they had wanted to keep £35k back to use for a small downstairs extension as the house really needs a bigger kitchen and/or downstairs toilet.

Now it turns out that the sellers still can't complete as the house is a probate sale and probate has still not been granted! (Applied for in July 2019 apparently). My sons asked the mortgage advisor if they can amend their application to borrow £255k instead of £219k and have their overtime looked at after all (especially as Oct, Nov and Dec were very high overtime figures) but the mortgage advisor has said that they can't do that? But when I telephoned the Natwest telephone centre for mortgages they said it should be possible but we have to go to the original mortgage advisor in branch (who is saying its not allowed?).

The mortgage advisor in branch looks to be in his late teens/early twenties and I have a feeling he only wants to do "easy" applications and doesn't actually know how to amend the existing one which is why hes saying it's not possible - or am I completely misjudging him?

The sellers still have no idea as to when the grant of probate will be sorted.

ACG

It can be done and it is quite easy to do with Natwest (at least from a brokers position, it could be different in branch). I doubt they will need a new valuation.

Moneyminded

Given that your sons have been doing overtime for the last few months and you say they earn £20k extra per year from overtime why not keep the application as it is? The lower mortgage amount will attract lower interest overall and they could save the overtime money in a separate account. In a short space of time pay cash for the extension they want overall it would work out cheaper.