Paying estate agent with cash, not sale proceeds?

AdrianC

Anamox said:

The question wasn't whether it is legal, more if it is doable.

Of course it is. You just say to the EA "I'm paying the bill directly, so don't send it to the solicitor".

The accounting benefit is that if I pay the EA from equity I will be down £4k on the deposit my next mortgage requires.

Which meaning of "deposit"?

In a chain, the ~10% security deposit on exchange normally gets passed up the chain, you probably won't need to pay more in.

If you mean the equity outside the borrowed LtV, then it really makes no difference, so long as it gets there somehow...

I could pay the £4k shortfall on the deposit from my current account but that would require money laundering checks

You're going to have to pass all the same KYC and AML checks anyway.

If anything, this kind of shuffling-around paranoia is going to make the solicitor more concerned, not less.

...and potential rejection as the original mortgage was based on the entire deposit coming from equity release.

The lender only care about the LtV and your affordability.

I don't trust the banks

I think we've nailed the true reason here...

But "the banks" don't come into it, unless you mean your lender. And if you don't trust that particular lender, why are you using them?

Or do you mean you don't trust ANY mortgage lender at all in principle? In which case, the tin-foil hats are that way ---->

 BTW, the money-laundering checks aren't the lender's decision, they're the law. And it's up to the solicitor to decide what is or is not appropriate for any individual customer.