As it turns out there is no such thing as a smooth house move. This is not entirely unexpected news based on my previous experience of house moves and the general anecdotal evidence. However the really disappointing aspect for our particular situation is that everything had gone smoothly up to this point and over 2 months had passed.
It now seems that, although we have done everything asked of us, the mortgage company do not really want to lend us the money. There is still an outside chance that they will come back with a revised decision in the next day or two but if I’m honest I don’t hold out much hope for that!
The sequence for our mortgage application went something like this:
- Existing customer porting existing mortgage deal – not a problem
- Mortgage affordability – not a problem
- Loan to value – not a problem (less than 50% being borrowed)
- Full structural survey of the property – not a problem
- Mortgage deal offered – No
I wish I could sum up what the problem is with our application but even though I’ve asked a number of times there is never a clear definitive answer. There is some mention of the fact that there are 2 title deeds that make up the whole property and also mention of the agricultural land but according to our solicitor neither of these points should be enough to refuse a mortgage deal.
Unfortunately we had a similar response from our initial enquiries with another high street lender so it sounds like most “ordinary” lenders don’t want to be bothered with any mortgage deals that involve anything out of the ordinary.
The upshot is that in these difficult financial times meeting the lender’s stated criteria for affordability and risk is just not enough to get a mortgage offer.
So we keep our fingers crossed that Plan B (a mortgage consultant) can find us someone who will offer us a mortgage so we can save the deal. In the meantime, we continue to wait in a kind of “no mans land” where there seems little point doing anything major to our current garden and veg beds – it’s hard to generate any enthusiasm at the moment even for the small jobs!
I’ll just keep reminding myself that the glass is half full and there are plenty of other people worse off than us!
Thanks for your post Richard – very frustrating. I have just started following your blog because you said you were moving to the North Pennines and found your experience re your mortgage very interesting on a number of levels. We’re currently trying to sell our house, and it involves two deeds as the previous owners bought a piece of land to tack on to the garden and build a workshop/forge – bizarre that this seems to be a stumbling block to acquiring a mortgage. It’s also bonkers that despite satisfying all their criteria and being the ideal borrowers they still seem reluctant to lend. I hope things look up for you both and they manage to agree your mortgage.
Thanks for the kind words and I’m sure that some good news will come eventually…
By the way I liked the lovely pictures on your website, we had been concerned that our new place is over 300m (1000ft) above sea level so it’s good to see how productive you have been at around 400m!!
Much as I like the idea, unfortunately I don’t think my wife would be too happy to go that far off-grid 😉
I felt the same way when we got here 10 years ago – but you adapt! When we did the ‘For Sale’ website, somehow a ‘survivalist’ forum found it and the property is widely admired by them! They seem to overlook the fact we still need oil to fuel the central heating and diesel to power the back-up gennie. I neglected the garden last year because I was studying (and the weather was so bad). I wasn’t going to do anything this year because we’re intending on moving, but with the way mortgages/economic flatlining/austerity belt-tightening is I’ve made a start by planting some old supermarket potatoes that were chitting away in the utility room! Now that the curlews and lapwings are back and the lambs are springing about, like you I’m thinking there are people far worse off.
Sorry to hear your news. this happened to us 24 years ago, farmhouse with five acres, all was going well, then the mortgage company said no, they would not lend on agricultural land, so we had to have two deeds drawn up, one for the land which we paid cash for and then a mortgage for the house. The really annoying thing was we could have bought the whole thing without a mortgage but were persuaded by our financial advisor to have a mortgage, by the time we were turned down we had invested a lot of our money on a fixed term so could not get our hands on it. After that we vowed never to have a mortgage again,and we never have.