Help! - Worried about Mortgage application, Gambling transactions

ng1993

Hello everybody, thought I would write on the forum as a new member to ask about my predicament and my worries.

Me and my partner, Both FTB, have been accepted on a £175k house and also managed to get approved via a Mortgage Broker a 95% deposit with Saffron Building Society. This DIP originally got referred as in my past, around 5 years ago I defaulted on a payday loan when I was young and in abit of financial worry but luckily came out the other side well and have fair and good credit scores with Experian, Equifax etc.

On Friday, I sent over my bank statements to my broker who said she was cautious about proceeding with my application, saying the reason why is that in June I spent £400 on my Skybet account. First of all, I never would spend this cash if I willingly couldn’t afford it as I was betting with my dad at home with no other things to do due to COVID-19! 

Previous statements I had, the max I spend a month on betting in May and April are £40 a month or something small, I said to my broker that I would forward her bank statements going back further to show this is a one off. 

My partners bank statements are squeaky clean and mine just have this mark on it, could I possibly provide any underwriters further info just to confirm this is literally a one off situation? 

Please let me know everybody, thank you

csgohan4

betting a large amount before a mortgage app is probably ill advised. Every lender has a different risk appetite for this. You may be ok, but you won't know until the underwriters come back

ng1993

csgohan4 said:

betting a large amount before a mortgage app is probably ill advised. Every lender has a different risk appetite for this. You may be ok, but you won't know until the underwriters come back

Thanks, could the underwriter potentially come back and request more information from myself? For example, I can provide bank statements going back 6 or 12 months?

I’m just extremely stressed that I have done this, If I knew beforehand I wouldn’t of bothered

[Deleted User]

To be honest, no one uses Saffron Building Society enough to say what they usually do. I only use them maybe once a year in normal times.  They got a lot of 95% business in the space of 2 or 3 days and they will be assessing it in a way that is completely different than they were assessing cases prior to Covid.  

Unless you find a broker or purchaser who submitted a case to them in the 3 day window they were taking 95% business and had a 1 off big month of gambling then you are not going to get any useful information here.   Best you will get is anecdotal stories of how other lenders assessed cases in a different underwriting world pre-covid. 

You will just have to wait for them to respond to the broker.   The one thing I will say is that small regional lenders tend to be better at taking common sense decisions...but they may have been told to tighten up when they were the only lender doing 95%. 

ng1993

Thanks for the comments, I’m going to try and ring my broker tomorrow to see what they thinks the best option.

She did mention about holding off for a month in July for a clean normal bank statement but then Junes bad statement is still there, I recommended giving her My March, Feb and Jan statements aswell as this would be pre-Covid world and ‘normal’ expenditure (e.g Going out for meals and drinks, spending on things that I couldn’t do in June for entertainment)

Just really hope that I haven’t screwed over myself for a first house with my partner :-(

Will let you know the update tomorrow

ng1993

UPDATE - 

Spoken to my Broker today who says that she spoke to Saffron and their open to the idea of extra statements to confirm it’s a one off thing and will consider it. She said what she’ll do is include gambling as a £100 commitment on my application as this keeps the mortgage within the affordability. 

She said that she can’t give me a definate yes or no answer but they’re open to it. 

Going to pay the application fees tomorrow, and will have to wait another 2 weeks to hear back, Gonna be sick as a dog waiting for these 2 weeks with anxiety through the roof! 😰

The ultimate worse case scenario will be if I get declined, lose my application fee and i’ll have to basically withdraw from the house purchase as the 95% market is basically non existant. So no pressure!!

foxy-stoat

Hopefully useful to others....but you will still get the,"can I take out a new loan for sofa, car, holiday just before a mortgage application" folk asking for help.

Fingers crossed for you.

tacpot12

Saffron Building Society - "Branches all over Saffron Walden."