Change of property since letter of offer, bank says we need new application....

mad-for-tar

Hi all,

Done a search here but cant seem to find anything specific to our case we have at the moment. Looking to see if anyone has encountered this before and how it panned out. Here in a nutshell is mine and Mrs. m-f-t's current situation.

>Got approval in principle from bank in Feb this year.
>Ended up in bidding war on a property we had viewed and lost out.
>Shortly after, had a look at another place, liked it and went sale agreed in April.
>Letter of offer issued in May (due to expire end of October).
>Solicitor then uncovered a heap of planning issues with the development the property sits on, some of which it appears now, even the vendors solicitor was and still is unaware of. Some of these will prevent or wont allow a mortgage to be drawn down on it and were advised in June or thereabouts to go on the search again. (4 other properties in same development have since been sold since our sale agreed and mortgages drawn down, how they have managed, we don't know).
>Have looked at a few others but nothing has ticked the boxes since.

Bank has now told us that in order to proceed with another property, we will have to redo and go through the whole mortgage application process again. As we understand it, the approval in principle was valid for 12 months from this institution and once the letter of offer is issued, it cancels that out as its fixed to that property intended to be purchased.

Has anyone else ever been in this situation, where letter of offer was issued but you had to back out for reasons outside of your control? Did your bank request you to do a new application or were you able to get it changed to a different property etc.? Any advice / tips etc., much appreciated.

Thanks!

ChewBerecca

We were gazzumped early this year after we got our letter of offer so we had to apply again for our current property.

Our mortgage advisor was really helpful, all we needed to do was resign the signature section of the application form and she handled the rest as she had our payslips/P60s etc on file so just needed our most recent ones since the last application was submitted.

So yes, you'll need to apply again, but probably won't be as difficult as the first time around and they should be able to match the initial offer amount unless something has happened in the interim. Should just be a matter of signing the forms and providing your most recent payslips if your advisor is any bit decent.

awec

Yes, if you get a full letter of offer issued and then pull out you are back to square 1.