How long for mortgage lender to agree to release funds?

RNM_92

We seem to be getting towards the end of a fairly stressful and drawn out house buying process and I just want to get the thing over the finish line now. I’ve already mentioned my situation before, but basically what should have been fairly straightforward has dragged on and on and has caused me a lot of stress and has affected my health (I have a chronic illness). My fiancé’s mother sadly passed away last year and left him and his brother her flat, for which his brother wanted to buy my fiancé out. We also decided to buy our first house with the inheritance, and got an offer accepted on a chain free house back in September. Things were going fairly well to start with, until my fiancé’s brother, who’s always lived at home and never had to lift a finger for anything, didn’t bother to instruct his solicitor until a month after all conveyancing was completed and contracts signed for our house, so the whole thing has been dragged out, especially as his solicitor doesn’t seem to communicate if there’s an issue and aren’t very proactive.

Anyway, finally we got to the point last week of agreeing a completion date and a date set for exchanging contracts. We decided on a completion date for as soon as possible for the flat just to get it out of the way, this Friday, while our sellers wanted a completion date for the end of the month for the house, which we were happy with. We agreed on this Monday for exchanging contracts. The brother’s solicitor said five working days would be enough to complete this Friday so started the process last Friday and requested funds from his mortgage lender (Nationwide). However it got to Monday and we couldn’t exchange because they were waiting for the lender to approve the release of funds for this Friday. We have now reached the end of the working day Tuesday and the lender still hasn’t responded. How long do they normally take to do this as I would’ve thought this should be a simple yes no answer and something they’re used to dealing with all the time? Should we be worried and is it likely we’re going to have to push the completion date back? Tbh I’m absolutely sick to my back teeth of this now and any further delays I just can’t cope with anymore because I’m so worn down with it all now. It’s been over six months now and I’ve had enough. I just hope we can still complete on our house by the end of the month. Our mortgage offer runs out at the end of April so I really hope things aren’t dragged out until past that point if people keep being slow. What’s more, we’re under even more  pressure because the landlord of our rented flat has just sold up with the completion date being tomorrow, and the new owner wants the flat to live in, so we need to be getting moving before that starts causing problems for us too.

user1977

You haven't told us who the lender is, which might help!

I'm not quite sure what the issue is, or whether there is any issue at all - what should happen once you have the mortgage offer is you then request the funds, and the lender sends them. If they were requested last Friday for completion this Friday, I wouldn't normally expect anything else to have happened so far.

Unfortunately post-lockdown there seems to have been a habit of solicitors being paranoid and asking a preliminary "yes, but are you sure you still want to lend the money" question to the lender, which then just tends to delay matters further.

Your solicitor should be guiding you through this anyway.

RNM_92

user1977 said:

You haven't told us who the lender is, which might help! I'm not quite sure what the issue is, or whether there is any issue at all - once you have the mortgage offer, you then request the funds, and the lender sends them. If they were requested last Friday for completion this Friday, I wouldn't expect anything else to have happened so far.

Apologies, it’s Nationwide. The issue is that the lender hasn’t responded to a request to release funds for this Friday, and that contracts can’t be exchanged until the solicitor receives confirmation from the lender that they’re able to do this. Being a FTB I don’t know how long it usually takes for this to happen and whether its going to mean we have to push back the completion date or not.

user1977

RNM_92 said:

user1977 said:

You haven't told us who the lender is, which might help! I'm not quite sure what the issue is, or whether there is any issue at all - once you have the mortgage offer, you then request the funds, and the lender sends them. If they were requested last Friday for completion this Friday, I wouldn't expect anything else to have happened so far.

Apologies, it’s Nationwide. The issue is that the lender hasn’t responded to a request to release funds for this Friday, and that contracts can’t be exchanged until the solicitor receives confirmation from the lender that they’re able to do this. Being a FTB I don’t know how long it usually takes for this to happen and whether its going to mean we have to push back the completion date or not.

They can be exchanged if the buyer's solicitor becomes less paranoid. This never used to be part of the process and I'm not sure why it seems to have become one. How long it takes depends on the workload at the lenders but if they were only asked on Friday I wouldn't see a particularly need to get worried about it - in practice they can usually get the funds themselves out almost by return.

RNM_92

user1977 said:

RNM_92 said:

user1977 said:

You haven't told us who the lender is, which might help! I'm not quite sure what the issue is, or whether there is any issue at all - once you have the mortgage offer, you then request the funds, and the lender sends them. If they were requested last Friday for completion this Friday, I wouldn't expect anything else to have happened so far.

Apologies, it’s Nationwide. The issue is that the lender hasn’t responded to a request to release funds for this Friday, and that contracts can’t be exchanged until the solicitor receives confirmation from the lender that they’re able to do this. Being a FTB I don’t know how long it usually takes for this to happen and whether its going to mean we have to push back the completion date or not.

They can be exchanged if the buyer's solicitor becomes less paranoid. This never used to be part of the process and I'm not sure why it seems to have become one. How long it takes depends on the workload at the lenders but if they were only asked on Friday I wouldn't see a particularly need to get worried about it - in practice they can usually get the funds themselves out almost by return.

Fair enough, and yeah it is frustrating. Tbh the solicitors have been particularly funny about a lot of things so far which has delayed stuff, and they’ve not even made that much effort to communicate. Apparently they needed my fiancé’s brother to confirm the title deeds were correct before starting the searches, after they’d been requested months after they should’ve been, and didn’t actually bother to tell him this. We only found out because I don’t trust them to do their jobs properly and chased up with our solicitor to ask whether the searches had started, a couple of weeks after we’d been told they were starting them.

Do you mean requesting the funds for a certain date and not exchanging until they do so never used to be part of the process?

That’s good then, and apologies, what do you mean by “get the funds themselves out by return” as I’ve not heard that term before?

user1977

RNM_92 said:

user1977 said:

RNM_92 said:

user1977 said:

You haven't told us who the lender is, which might help! I'm not quite sure what the issue is, or whether there is any issue at all - once you have the mortgage offer, you then request the funds, and the lender sends them. If they were requested last Friday for completion this Friday, I wouldn't expect anything else to have happened so far.

Apologies, it’s Nationwide. The issue is that the lender hasn’t responded to a request to release funds for this Friday, and that contracts can’t be exchanged until the solicitor receives confirmation from the lender that they’re able to do this. Being a FTB I don’t know how long it usually takes for this to happen and whether its going to mean we have to push back the completion date or not.

They can be exchanged if the buyer's solicitor becomes less paranoid. This never used to be part of the process and I'm not sure why it seems to have become one. How long it takes depends on the workload at the lenders but if they were only asked on Friday I wouldn't see a particularly need to get worried about it - in practice they can usually get the funds themselves out almost by return.

Do you mean requesting the funds for a certain date and not exchanging until they do so never used to be part of the process?

That’s good then, and apologies, what do you mean by “get the funds themselves out by return” as I’ve not heard that term before?

1. Yes, you received the mortgage offer, you then requested the funds and the lender sent them. You didn't have an intermediate stage of contacting the lender, saying "you issued a mortgage offer and we're about to exchange - you aren't just about to change your mind about things, are you?"

2. You (or rather your solicitor) requests the mortgage funds and tell the lender what date you want them for. Typically lenders say "give us at least 5 working days' notice" (or similar), but in practice they can usually deal with it much faster than that.

RNM_92

user1977 said:

RNM_92 said:

user1977 said:

RNM_92 said:

user1977 said:

You haven't told us who the lender is, which might help! I'm not quite sure what the issue is, or whether there is any issue at all - once you have the mortgage offer, you then request the funds, and the lender sends them. If they were requested last Friday for completion this Friday, I wouldn't expect anything else to have happened so far.

Apologies, it’s Nationwide. The issue is that the lender hasn’t responded to a request to release funds for this Friday, and that contracts can’t be exchanged until the solicitor receives confirmation from the lender that they’re able to do this. Being a FTB I don’t know how long it usually takes for this to happen and whether its going to mean we have to push back the completion date or not.

They can be exchanged if the buyer's solicitor becomes less paranoid. This never used to be part of the process and I'm not sure why it seems to have become one. How long it takes depends on the workload at the lenders but if they were only asked on Friday I wouldn't see a particularly need to get worried about it - in practice they can usually get the funds themselves out almost by return.

Do you mean requesting the funds for a certain date and not exchanging until they do so never used to be part of the process?

That’s good then, and apologies, what do you mean by “get the funds themselves out by return” as I’ve not heard that term before?

1. Yes, you received the mortgage offer, you then requested the funds and the lender sent them. You didn't have an intermediate stage of contacting the lender, saying "you issued a mortgage offer and we're about to exchange - you aren't just about to change your mind about things, are you?"

2. You (or rather your solicitor) requests the mortgage funds and tell the lender what date you want them for. Typically lenders say "give us at least 5 working days' notice" (or similar), but in practice they can usually deal with it much faster than that.

So I’ve finally found out what’s happening, Nationwide have agreed to release funds (the brother got a text from them this week confirming this), so it’s the solicitor messing about as I suspected. God knows why they’re still not doing anything. It’s the day before the supposed completion day and still no exchange of contracts and no communication from them to our solicitor, who has no idea what’s happening.