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Buying A House: The Mortgage Offer

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Once we had put an offer in for our dream home and it had been accepted, the property was quickly taken off the market and on Rightmove it showed as SOLD STC. I was so, so happy and couldn’t help but tell the world on Instagram. I was soon living to regret this when the mortgage offer started taking forever!

As soon as the offer was accepted, we contacted our broker and he set about doing the full mortgage application. As previously mentioned we’d already been credit checked so there was no real concerns around that, so we sent in all our documents proving eligibility and affordability. The sort of things they need are personal identification such as passport or driving licence, proof of address in the form of a utility bill, payslips for the past six months, proof of annual bonus and bank statements for the past six months. Although we have a joint account where we put all of our wages, we are paid into our own accounts so we needed to send statements for both single accounts and our joint account.

Our broker started the process on a Friday and came to see us the following Monday to talk about what he’d put through and discuss life insurance options.

We already understand the importance of life insurance and already have a policy to pay out if one or both of us die. We are going to keep this policy to help us pay bills if the worst happens, but we’ve taken out an extra two policies as well. One to cover the mortgage and a critical illness policy to help cover one of our salaries if one of us falls critically ill.

Our mortgage provider Natwest are really good in that they are happy to proceed with the survey while the mortgage application is being processed so that things aren’t slowed down. We had to pay the survey upfront at £442 but if the mortgage application fails it’s refunded so we had no qualms about that. Our broker was confident everything would be fine and we’d hear in one or two days. One or two days turned into over a week after the underwriter hit a snag.

I’ve discussed before about Neil’s defaults and he had one with RBS which I successfully challenged in 2016. After challenging it, the default was removed, we received compensation, however three late payment markers were left in its place. The underwriter had his concerns regarding these late payment markers and decided to do an internal investigation to find out why they were there. (RBS and Natwest are effectively the same bank) This took a few days, delaying things considerably. This was probably the most stressful part of the whole process, not knowing whether or not the mortgage would go ahead. The underwriter finally decided he wanted the late payment markers removed which took a further couple of days. The whole time we were on tenterhooks and I’d given up all hope of ya ever getting a mortgage. Finally, last Tuesday, 11 days after making the full mortgage application, the mortgage was approved and we were offered the full amount we requested.

Meanwhile the survey had taken place and the surveyor was happy that the house was worth what we are paying for it. We instructed solicitors to start the conveyancing process and paid them £250 to begin their searches while photocopying document after document proving our ID and affordability. As well as all the documents listed above, they also want proof of deposit which means six months of statements proving where our deposit has come from.

It’s now a case of sit back and wait for the solicitors to do their bit which we are told can take 8-12 weeks making us very glad we started the process when we did! It’s been a stressful month waiting to see if we’d get the mortgage we so desperately wanted and finding the perfect house and being scared we would lose it. There’s still a long way to go and circumstances can change but I hope it will be a smooth process from here on out. We have so many ideas for our new home and are so excited that Dexter will finally have a garden to play in. Mostly I am thankful to my husband who has put up with me scrimping and saving every last penny over the past two years trying to make our financial picture look good. It has all paid off in the end and it feels so good to finally relax and think it’s ok to treat myself to a Costa coffee once in a while again! (Yes I have been that mean on myself for yonks!)

I am also letting myself dream about what interior designing I want to start doing when we move in. I definitely want to start with the master bedroom which I want to have a nautical theme with long lasting engineered wood planks on the walls and floors. Dexter will be in a much bigger bedroom which is going to need a good lick of paint, some new furniture and durable solid wood planks. We are grateful that the kitchen has only just been done in recent years and won’t need much doing to it at all, whereas the lounge is going to be our first project with new sofas, a redesigned fireplace and lots of family portraits all over the walls.

Read our story so far here.

Read all about finding our dream home here.

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