Service fee rentcharge and Nationwide

middleagedriver

We are in the late stages of buying a house with a Nationwide Mortgage. The house was built in 2017 by Miller Homes and like a lot of new builds has a annual service charge associated with it which we are totally fine with and knew about this when we bought.

It has now been 6 weeks since our solicitor notified the sellers solicitor about this and insisting Nationwide require a deed of variation, so Miller/Management company can’t apply a lease on the property if we miss a payment. We understand that it is very much a benefit to us if we can get this done.

The sellers solicitor seems to be really slow and only just got back to us about the possibility of a indemnity policy which our solicitor has said is not possible, so it doesn’t even look like they asked the management company about a deed of variation. 

My solicitor seems to think a deed of variation can be costly and take 6-8 weeks to resolve. 

Has anyone been through this before and can give me an idea of cost and timescale?

Do Nationwide actually accept an indemnity policy for this?

EDIT: house is a freehold with rentcharge 

eddddy

middleagedriver said:

Do Nationwide actually accept an indemnity policy for this?

It seems that Nationwide say they don't accept an indemnity policy. You can see what Nationwide say about Estate Rent charges here (scroll down to find Nationwide's comments)....

https://lendershandbook.ukfinance.org.uk/lenders-handbook/englandandwales/question-list/1865/


Here are some snippets from that page:

Where a charge has been collected in the last 12 years or relates to the costs of services being provided, it will be acceptable providing that the collector/recipient of the charge must give the property owner and any lender notice of arrears and give them 2 months’ notice to remedy the breach. Additionally, if further action is taken regarding non-payment the collector/recipient must notify the lender of such action. If the agreement doesn’t include these details a deed of variation is required.
...
...
Where a deed of variation is required, an indemnity policy is not an acceptable alternative.

sidneyvic

Good luck with that, 6 to 8 weeks is very optimistic.... 6 to 8 months might be more realistic by which time your mortgage offer will be history.
Your mortgage advisor (or Nationwide if direct ) should have known this and done their job and advised you of this so you had the choice to go with a provider that does not need a variation...
Whatever you do, do it quick because on 15th Sept. rates are odds on to increase again so God knows what the rates will be like after this....

middleagedriver

sidneyvic said:

Good luck with that, 6 to 8 weeks is very optimistic.... 6 to 8 months might be more realistic by which time your mortgage offer will be history.
Your mortgage advisor (or Nationwide if direct ) should have known this and done their job and advised you of this so you had the choice to go with a provider that does not need a variation...
Whatever you do, do it quick because on 15th Sept. rates are odds on to increase again so God knows what the rates will be like after this....

I have been told by my solicitor that it does take a long time to complete the deed of variation but Nationwide will accept an agreement signed by seller solicitors, managements solicitors and ours that gets submitted on completion with the Land Registry. So I don’t think we will be in danger of it not being done in time.

Doorlock21

middleagedriver said:

sidneyvic said:

Good luck with that, 6 to 8 weeks is very optimistic.... 6 to 8 months might be more realistic by which time your mortgage offer will be history.
Your mortgage advisor (or Nationwide if direct ) should have known this and done their job and advised you of this so you had the choice to go with a provider that does not need a variation...
Whatever you do, do it quick because on 15th Sept. rates are odds on to increase again so God knows what the rates will be like after this....

I have been told by my solicitor that it does take a long time to complete the deed of variation but Nationwide will accept an agreement signed by seller solicitors, managements solicitors and ours that gets submitted on completion with the Land Registry. So I don’t think we will be in danger of it not being done in time.

Hiya- did you get a Dov in the end? 

Did they accept an agreement?

middleagedriver

Doorlock21 said:

middleagedriver said:

sidneyvic said:

Good luck with that, 6 to 8 weeks is very optimistic.... 6 to 8 months might be more realistic by which time your mortgage offer will be history.
Your mortgage advisor (or Nationwide if direct ) should have known this and done their job and advised you of this so you had the choice to go with a provider that does not need a variation...
Whatever you do, do it quick because on 15th Sept. rates are odds on to increase again so God knows what the rates will be like after this....

I have been told by my solicitor that it does take a long time to complete the deed of variation but Nationwide will accept an agreement signed by seller solicitors, managements solicitors and ours that gets submitted on completion with the Land Registry. So I don’t think we will be in danger of it not being done in time.

Hiya- did you get a Dov in the end? 

Did they accept an agreement?

We did actually. But sadly we had to pull out of the transaction due to seller difficulty.

It was actually quite painless in the end as the developer and management company had a solicitor with a POA set up for standard DoV’s. So once the fee was paid by the seller (this was actually the hardest part). A draft deed was sent to sellers solicitor within a week and my solicitor approved it the following week. Then the actual deed was produced and signed by developers/management company and both sellers. Took roughly 5 weeks for the whole process.