Feeling Lost - Remortgage refused

mforgey

Hi everyone,

My fiancée and I have struggled to secure a mortgage for about 2 months. It is for a plot of land with a Class Q for a barn conversion.

Because the seller wanted to sell quickly and because we wanted to get it quickly as well, we first applied for a bridging loan with the idea of paying it back by remortgaging our current property. 

The first bridging loan got rejected because it is our first project.

The second bridging loan got rejected because the valuation report came back lower than expected. (the valuer missed 1000 square meters of the land, but when we told him about that, his reply was that it would not make a big difference).

We then applied for a remortgage straight away. 

After 4 weeks of our file being with the underwriter and about 1.000.000 questions and documents later, we were told yesterday that the remortgage was rejected because it is our first project and if anything was to go wrong, we could be in financial difficulties.

This really baffles me. They knew from day 1 that it was our first self-build, but took our money and made us pay for a valuation anyhow. But more importantly, they kept on asking questions and documents, which made us think that they were really considering our financing. 

We are thinking about appealing their decision, but even our mortgage broker doesn't think that it will change anything. 
He told us that with any other underwriter, we would have had our offer, but we had the pickiest lady on earth.

We are a bit lost now and unsure what to try next.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks 

ACG

Have you tried a broker? (just to be clear, I have no vested interest in saying that - what you describe is not my bag). 
Throwing in however many applications is going to be hammering your credit report and could cause other issues down the line.  

mforgey

We are using a broker.

ACG

Have they made all of these applications? 

mforgey

Yes he has. We were meeting the criteria and everything was going well each time but it looks like the underwriter was trying to find something wrong and when they didn't they used a "stupid" excuse 

ACG

It might be worth trying another broker. 
It sounds like you might just have a broker who can do this type of case but has little or no experience of it.