When you apply for a mortgage each lender is different and even though I’ve had mortgages before they still managed to catch me out with a question I’d not been asked before! This time it was the name of the tax office that processes my tax return….I don’t really see the relevance but there you go! I’ve given it to them now so I thought I was home and dry…apparently not yet.
I met up with my financial adviser and completed the mortgage application online and due to the much talked about ‘credit crunch’ the rates were pretty rubbish especially as my partner is self employed. We decided on the lender and he rang them to check everything would be okay, and they were happy with everything so we completed the online form and it all went through…WooHoo 
of course in fairy tales that is where we end with the mortgage going fine and we live happily ever after 
Of course here in the real world this is what happened….
Friday at 5pm my financial adviser calls to say the mortgage lender has a problem with the house…have they seen it I ask? (knowing it needs a lot of work I thought this had put them off!) No he says. Well what don’t they like then? I ask. The house we are trying to buy is in a seaside town and it is large (for a british home ) it has 6 bedrooms on the details so that is what we put on the application although as I explained the master bedroom has been badly split to make it into 2 bedrooms and in doing so they have had to cover part of the original victorian ceiling rose, of course the first thing we will do is carefully rip down this wall thus converting the house back into 5 bedrooms. Apparently the lender doesn’t lend on guest houses and is concerned that we could try and do that in the future (or we are lying now and plan on doing that!) so its a combination of a large house in a seaside town that appears to be a problem.
Anyway my adviser has gone back to the lender and explained the above (no way am I running a guest house far too much work and my breakfasts are rubbish!)
The next concern is that as we are relocating how can they be sure my partner would continue getting work so we explain that he is a plumber so it really doesn’t matter where he lives a good plumber ALWAYS has plenty of work, I mean lets be honest even the rubbish plumbers always have work!
So we are now waiting to hear if we have overcome these hurdles and it really just goes to show that even when you make phone calls to the lenders to try and avoid wasting everyones time by applying for a mortgage when they won’t lend to you or on the house things can and almost certainly will still come up. I am still confident that the mortgage will go through and I’d rather they did this now before they cash my cheque for the survey than after they’ve cashed it!
