Gazumped ! Mortgage offer withdrawn

2cojones · 13 December 2019 at 12:00AM

I put an offer on a house back in October but the mortgage application was declined. I got a new broker who found a more suitable lender and I put another offer to the seller which was accepted but the seller wanted to keep his house on the market until my mortgage was in place due to my previous mortgage failure (no problem) . I applied for my mortgage with Kent Reliance, and after a long 10 working days it was accepted (yesterday). Great news !

However the day before my good news my Estate Agent phoned me to let me know that someone else had put in a higher offer (about £2.5k more) on the house. The agent had been in touch with my broker throughout so knew that a mortgage decision was imminent (and that it looked like a positive outcome) so let the vendor know this. However on letting the vendor know that the mortgage was in place he decided to go with the other buyers (also chain-free) even though he had agreed to my offer and knew that I had a valuation done last week.. The agent suggested increasing my offer to match the other party's offer, which I did. The vendor came back, sticking with his decision to go with the other buyers even though they only had an AIP.

So basically I have been gazumped ! The other problem now is that even though the broker advised that to apply the mortgage offer to a different property would be a case of just changing over the property details and have a new valuation done, he came back to me today advising that I would have to apply for a mortgage again with Kent Reliance once I've found a different house.

I just can't believe that I have to go through all that again. I had to provide a lot of supporting documentation (as self-employed). Is this common ? Why would they need to approve me again when the only change is the property ?

Any insight into this would be really appreciated.

[Deleted User] · 13 December 2019 at 12:13AM

Each lender works differently. Some just do a new valuation and change over the case to the new property.

Others start from scratch on a brand new lending decision.

Not sure if there is a particular reason for it but its not uncommon to do it either way.

In theory they will reference the other case and it should be a lot easier 2nd time round.

Nationwide do the 'start from scratch' thing but if we give them the old reference number then they will copy all the docs across and speed up the whole process

Not sure how KR work but I'd imagine it similar

2cojones · 13 December 2019 at 12:22AM

Thanks for your prompt advice. I really hope it is easier 2nd time around with KR, the first was a seemingly endless string of requests for additional evidence. Great end result though. It's just that the time it takes is a killer. I am now under some pressure buy a house as I need to leave rented house by April latest, really don't want to have to commit to another 1 year min rental agreement.

Do you have any comment on the gazumping thing ? The whole thing does seem rather fishy to me. Even the agent (who I bought and sold through before) denies that anything has happened which is untoward.

[Deleted User] · 13 December 2019 at 12:56AM

Just bad luck to be honest. I very very rarely see gazumping these days. When it does happen its usually when the buyer has low confidence that the transaction will go through.

Hopefully with the next one you offer and say 'my last one got all the way to offer'. This should pip you ahead of someone with an AIP as they haven't gone through underwriting.

I literally can't think of the last gazumping I was involved in. 2 or 3 years and a few hundreds deals ago it the only one I can think of.

Sounds like the first attempt at a mortgage just didn't give the seller the confidence to stick with you

2cojones · 13 December 2019 at 1:48AM

Thanks again for posting. I'll have to just take it on the chin then. For me it's surprising as there had been no offers on the house for nearly four months, had a torturous route to getting the mortgage and on the day of approval I get gazumped ! As I said the other buyer and I have no chain, I have my offer, he has an AIP, seller desperately needs to sell as found a house with no onward chain.

Further to this I have spend nearly £1k all non-refundable (£395 broker fee, £130 lender admin fee, £200 upfront fee for Conveyancer, £250 Valuation)

unforeseen · 13 December 2019 at 6:47AM

Is it really gazumping? The new offer was agreed when you were still not in a proceedable position with a history of failed mortgage application

ACG · 13 December 2019 at 10:27AM

Being gazumped is just a fact of life, nothing can be done about that.

As for the switching to a new property, is your broker new?
I would expect if you find a new property within the next month or 2, it would be a new application, but your broker can just add a note to say cross reference the new application with the old application (and then the old application number) and a new bank statement/payslip if necessary and job done.

Kent are now a days a fairly common sense lender - it is all about applying notes with Kent. Put notes on to explain things and it makes the whole process a lot quicker - I have had cases go to offer with tham that do not fit criteria but with an explanation as to how I viewed it and why I think they should do it (we are talking about a paragraph or 2), they accepted it without needing any additional information.

Any new application within a reasonable time frame should fly through.

2cojones · 13 December 2019 at 1:41PM

unforeseen wrote: »

Is it really gazumping? The new offer was agreed when you were still not in a proceedable position with a history of failed mortgage application

Well it is at least borderline gazumping. In any case not a nice thing to do … knowing that the lender had instructed the survey last week and reassurances via my broker and the agent that the mortgage looked very much like being accepted. But even based on my history of expressing interest in the house, having a mortgage in my hand and matching the other offer ….

2cojones · 13 December 2019 at 1:48PM

ACG wrote: »

Being gazumped is just a fact of life, nothing can be done about that.

As for the switching to a new property, is your broker new?
I would expect if you find a new property within the next month or 2, it would be a new application, but your broker can just add a note to say cross reference the new application with the old application (and then the old application number) and a new bank statement/payslip if necessary and job done.

Kent are now a days a fairly common sense lender - it is all about applying notes with Kent. Put notes on to explain things and it makes the whole process a lot quicker - I have had cases go to offer with tham that do not fit criteria but with an explanation as to how I viewed it and why I think they should do it (we are talking about a paragraph or 2), they accepted it without needing any additional information.

Any new application within a reasonable time frame should fly through.

Thank you for your reassurance. Yes this is the first time I've used this broker (first one I felt was unrealistic using High Street lenders).

Yes that is the plan to find somewhere in the next month or so. I don't know much about Kent Reliance so thank you for the heads up about how they like to do things.

Gazumped ! Mortgage offer withdrawn

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