Unwarranted credit searches in mortgage application?

dunwat2005

Hi All

Seeking advice on this topic.

I've been doing a BTL mortgage application with a high street lender since December 2020. I made the mistake of going direct rather than through a broker as the Lender seemed responsive initially, however, this soon changed and the application has dragged on for 4 months, during which time the Lender has constantly asked for new information drip by drip all of which could have been provided at the beginning had they done thorough fact finding. For example, at one point the application was rejected on the grounds that the Lender suspected I wanted to live in the property myself, absurd in itself as I already own two residential properties but also because the property is tenanted. At each stage I have supplied each piece of new information requested then waited a week or more to hear back from the anonymous 'Underwriter' via a  'mortgage advisor', all of whom are uncontactable except via email. Finally, I heard back from the Lender this week saying that everything had been approved - yippee except that needless to say the vendor had got fed up of waiting and put the property back on the market weeks ago. 

My question is this - I have just noticed that the Lender has conducted 4 hard credit searches on my during the last few months - the most recent one only this week. I cannot fathom the rationale or possible justification for this since all of these searches relate to the same application and although I authorized the first one done months ago - I did not authorize the rest. What are the rules around hard credit searches? I understood that it was necessary for an organization to secure an individual's permission before running a hard credit search? Does authorizing an organization to do one search, by default grant permission for them to do more without consent? If not, what are my options to seek redress?

Many thanks for any advice.

Disgruntled.

sparelogin

Yes. Lenders will often carry out further checks pre completion.

K_S

@dunwat2005 4 hard footprints on one single file or across the 3 credit files?

Do keep in mind that sites like Clearscore can sometimes misreport the number of searches, showing the same one more than once for some time.

The small print usually does say that they can do multiple searches, but if you think it excessive, might be worth complaining and see what they say.