Mortgage Application C**k Up - Advice Needed
Discussion
Good Afternoon, I'm looking for some help from the more experienced members of PH. Apologies if this is a wordy post...
My Partner and I started the process of purchasing a property in March this year, it was supposed to be a quick sale as we are not part of a chain as we are not selling our current property and the mortgage advisor assured us that securing the nessesary funds would be a piece of cake.
We made an offer, it was accepted and the process started as did the problems.... We mistakenly (we know now) agreed to use the in house financial svcs of this particular estate agents, who then on our behalf applied for the two mortgages. Mortgage 1, in my partners name only a re-mortgage on his property to provide a large (ish) deposit on the new house. Mortgage 2, in both our names for the remainder of the finances required. The FA applied for both, with the same bank, forms went off and we waited.
In the mean time we saw advertised a great rate with the HSBC, so i applied for Mortgage 2 with them. I explained we already had an application in for this money and was assured this was not a problem, again forms went off and we waited. 4 weeks later i have a letter confirming from HSBC we have the funds requested, despite being told frequently by FA that HSBC would never provide us with the money for a wide range of reasons...
At this stage FA still has no news of the aplication he put in, We request he cancels mortgage 2 application with this bank so we are now only applying for the re-mortgage with them. Yes no problem i'm assured this has been done. More time passes and still no news, i chase and chase and chase and chase... yes he'll call you back, yes he's not in right now I'll get him to call you back, is all we are getting.
By now it's the beginning of May, still no news, this is strange i think, so we are a little naughty and we call the bank that the FA has applied to on our behalf. This is when we discover that this particular bank rejected our application 10 days previous and rejected the appeal 3 days later.... Needless to say we go balistic, withdraw our application from the FA and go and see an independant company, 6 days later we have the offer, three weeks later we have the money in the bank ready to exchange in a couple of days.
My question, what if any recourse do i have against the estate agents financial svcs? they have delayed our moving process by 8 weeks, caused massive stress to both ourselves and the sellers of the property. I do not want them to get away with this shocking behaviour but don't know what i can legally do about it.
My Partner and I started the process of purchasing a property in March this year, it was supposed to be a quick sale as we are not part of a chain as we are not selling our current property and the mortgage advisor assured us that securing the nessesary funds would be a piece of cake.
We made an offer, it was accepted and the process started as did the problems.... We mistakenly (we know now) agreed to use the in house financial svcs of this particular estate agents, who then on our behalf applied for the two mortgages. Mortgage 1, in my partners name only a re-mortgage on his property to provide a large (ish) deposit on the new house. Mortgage 2, in both our names for the remainder of the finances required. The FA applied for both, with the same bank, forms went off and we waited.
In the mean time we saw advertised a great rate with the HSBC, so i applied for Mortgage 2 with them. I explained we already had an application in for this money and was assured this was not a problem, again forms went off and we waited. 4 weeks later i have a letter confirming from HSBC we have the funds requested, despite being told frequently by FA that HSBC would never provide us with the money for a wide range of reasons...
At this stage FA still has no news of the aplication he put in, We request he cancels mortgage 2 application with this bank so we are now only applying for the re-mortgage with them. Yes no problem i'm assured this has been done. More time passes and still no news, i chase and chase and chase and chase... yes he'll call you back, yes he's not in right now I'll get him to call you back, is all we are getting.
By now it's the beginning of May, still no news, this is strange i think, so we are a little naughty and we call the bank that the FA has applied to on our behalf. This is when we discover that this particular bank rejected our application 10 days previous and rejected the appeal 3 days later.... Needless to say we go balistic, withdraw our application from the FA and go and see an independant company, 6 days later we have the offer, three weeks later we have the money in the bank ready to exchange in a couple of days.
My question, what if any recourse do i have against the estate agents financial svcs? they have delayed our moving process by 8 weeks, caused massive stress to both ourselves and the sellers of the property. I do not want them to get away with this shocking behaviour but don't know what i can legally do about it.
After all, the estate agent represents the seller; I'd want someone working for me or, at least, impartial.Whilst I appreciate that your experience has been largely disappointing I'd like to offer a possible explanation based on my own experiences.
It is increasingly becoming a nightmare dealing with some banks as they only provide a rough guide to lending criteria and underwriters are difficult to deal with directly. The procedure is usually for an adviser to discuss a case with their local business develop/pre sales team prior to submitting cases. It is highly likely that the pre sales team will say YES please apply yet when it comes to the full application which a underwriter (not a administrator) examines it then becomes apparent that actually the client may not be able to apply for the loan. All too often though the application has been submitted, reviewed, additional information requested/processed which can take weeks before a underwriter even sees the case.
Once you have sent in additional information and complied with the underwriters every demand (one recently asked me to supply three years bank statements to prove a client had really saved the deposit money themselves) you can then be told that for XYZ reason that the application can no longer proceed. The fact that condition XYZ is not mentioned in the available product literature nor is it information that is readily available to advisers is irrelevant.
You are then in a position of having to explain to the client that although they meet all of the published requirements, have a perfect credit history and a suitable deposit that they won't get the loan. If you are lucky the application fees/valuation fees have not been taken and you have only wasted time. On the other hand it may be that costs have been incurred which makes things far worse.
What is particularly annoying and often cited as justification for charging clients up front regardless if a application is successful is that there have been clients who were declined when the application was via an intermediary, who fail to meet the published lending criteria for a specific lender who then stroll into the bank branch, use a branch adviser and magically have a loan in no time....
It is increasingly becoming a nightmare dealing with some banks as they only provide a rough guide to lending criteria and underwriters are difficult to deal with directly. The procedure is usually for an adviser to discuss a case with their local business develop/pre sales team prior to submitting cases. It is highly likely that the pre sales team will say YES please apply yet when it comes to the full application which a underwriter (not a administrator) examines it then becomes apparent that actually the client may not be able to apply for the loan. All too often though the application has been submitted, reviewed, additional information requested/processed which can take weeks before a underwriter even sees the case.
Once you have sent in additional information and complied with the underwriters every demand (one recently asked me to supply three years bank statements to prove a client had really saved the deposit money themselves) you can then be told that for XYZ reason that the application can no longer proceed. The fact that condition XYZ is not mentioned in the available product literature nor is it information that is readily available to advisers is irrelevant.
You are then in a position of having to explain to the client that although they meet all of the published requirements, have a perfect credit history and a suitable deposit that they won't get the loan. If you are lucky the application fees/valuation fees have not been taken and you have only wasted time. On the other hand it may be that costs have been incurred which makes things far worse.
What is particularly annoying and often cited as justification for charging clients up front regardless if a application is successful is that there have been clients who were declined when the application was via an intermediary, who fail to meet the published lending criteria for a specific lender who then stroll into the bank branch, use a branch adviser and magically have a loan in no time....
Sorry, i'm not having a go at estate agents or Financial Advisors in general, they don't have an easy job. What has pissed me off more than anything is the fact that we called the bank because we were getting concerned. We should never have had to do that, if that's not bad enough the bank told us we had been turned down 10 days previous. The FA had not told us, now if we hadn't rung the bank that day and had left it in the hands of the FA, at what point would the he have passed on that news..... I'm assuming no-one on here would behave in such a way..
Find'a'leaky said:
Sorry, i'm not having a go at estate agents or Financial Advisors in general, they don't have an easy job. What has pissed me off more than anything is the fact that we called the bank because we were getting concerned. We should never have had to do that, if that's not bad enough the bank told us we had been turned down 10 days previous. The FA had not told us, now if we hadn't rung the bank that day and had left it in the hands of the FA, at what point would the he have passed on that news..... I'm assuming no-one on here would behave in such a way..
For me, I would want to know why your application had been declined. The answer to this would form the basis of what form of recourse I wanted.As a Mortgage Broker myself, it seems odd to me that the original lender declined you and HSBC accepted you, as HSBC are notorius for being very picky about who they lend to.
Find'a'leaky said:
Sorry, i'm not having a go at estate agents or Financial Advisors in general, they don't have an easy job. What has pissed me off more than anything is the fact that we called the bank because we were getting concerned. We should never have had to do that, if that's not bad enough the bank told us we had been turned down 10 days previous. The FA had not told us, now if we hadn't rung the bank that day and had left it in the hands of the FA, at what point would the he have passed on that news..... I'm assuming no-one on here would behave in such a way..
I agree that you certainly haven't been kept in the loop and for you to have to make your own enquiries only to find out that you were declined is unacceptable. As the other poster mentioned, it is important for you to establish the reason for the decline. Do you have access to your credit history? It is possible to get a 30day free trial with Experian (just remember to cancel!!) as this will show if there have perhaps been any errors or excessive searches which would potentially damage your rating.
Another consideration is did you complete the original application form yourself or did the adviser complete it on your behalf based on the results of the Fact Find? If you were only provided with the declaration and direct debit form to sign, ask the adviser for the full application.
Olf said:
Surely you just complain straight to the FSA?
Not sure what about?When the OP contacted the bank they had only rejected the loan 10 days previously, and the appeal 3 days later. So the FA hadn't told them their loan had been rejected 7 days later. Shirley not the end of the world?
Countdown said:
Not sure what about?
When the OP contacted the bank they had only rejected the loan 10 days previously, and the appeal 3 days later. So the FA hadn't told them their loan had been rejected 7 days later. Shirley not the end of the world?
Maybe I misread but the FA appealed after he'd be told NOT to proceed by the client. When the OP contacted the bank they had only rejected the loan 10 days previously, and the appeal 3 days later. So the FA hadn't told them their loan had been rejected 7 days later. Shirley not the end of the world?
Countdown said:
Not sure what about?
When the OP contacted the bank they had only rejected the loan 10 days previously, and the appeal 3 days later. So the FA hadn't told them their loan had been rejected 7 days later. Shirley not the end of the world?
+1When the OP contacted the bank they had only rejected the loan 10 days previously, and the appeal 3 days later. So the FA hadn't told them their loan had been rejected 7 days later. Shirley not the end of the world?
Poor communication is not exactly on the FSA's hit list.......
The reason for the declined application however.....
Sorry, for being a while, exchange is now happening and everything has just become a little hectic. Apologies if my posts haven't been very clear, just to clarify, the appeal wasn't logged after we asked them to stop, our annoyance was that we had been rejected and NOT told for 10 days. If we hadn't contacted the bank directly who gave us this information, i wonder how much longer we would have been in the dark about it. Regarding the forms, all filled in by the FA we were only required to sign, there were errors on the form which we corrected prior to signatures which the FA told us were not important but he'd change them.
Have also asked on several occasions to see the a print out of the original application so we can try to determine why we were rejected. Have had a credit check done since by the independant FA and all appears okay, but still very un-happy with how the whole situation has been handled.
Have also asked on several occasions to see the a print out of the original application so we can try to determine why we were rejected. Have had a credit check done since by the independant FA and all appears okay, but still very un-happy with how the whole situation has been handled.
Countdown said:
Not sure what about?
When the OP contacted the bank they had only rejected the loan 10 days previously, and the appeal 3 days later. So the FA hadn't told them their loan had been rejected 7 days later. Shirley not the end of the world?
No not the end of the world, but would you seriously be happy if you discovered that someone was with holding information of that importance from you for 10 days. We should have been told immediately, so we could act upon that information.When the OP contacted the bank they had only rejected the loan 10 days previously, and the appeal 3 days later. So the FA hadn't told them their loan had been rejected 7 days later. Shirley not the end of the world?
Find'a'leaky said:
Countdown said:
Not sure what about?
When the OP contacted the bank they had only rejected the loan 10 days previously, and the appeal 3 days later. So the FA hadn't told them their loan had been rejected 7 days later. Shirley not the end of the world?
No not the end of the world, but would you seriously be happy if you discovered that someone was with holding information of that importance from you for 10 days. We should have been told immediately, so we could act upon that information.When the OP contacted the bank they had only rejected the loan 10 days previously, and the appeal 3 days later. So the FA hadn't told them their loan had been rejected 7 days later. Shirley not the end of the world?
Find'a'leaky said:
My question, what if any recourse do i have against the estate agents financial svcs? they have delayed our moving process by 8 weeks, caused massive stress to both ourselves and the sellers of the property. I do not want them to get away with this shocking behaviour but don't know what i can legally do about it.
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