Any advice gratefully received.
We are more than two months into the process of buying a house (and selling), and all the legalities (which were not straightforward) are almost sorted out, and we could very soon exchange contracts except .... we have still not had our mortgage offer confirmed by Santander. They have made it a condition that we get the seller's buildings insurance transferred to us, because of a problem which their valuer identified, but which our building surveyor and a structural engineer we paid to do a detailed report both think is insignificant.
The seller's insurance company will not agree to transfer the insurance.
It seems to take Santander 10 days for any piece of information to get from arriving with them to being seen by anyone who can make a decision. I have rung them to discuss the insurance problem to try to speed things up but they say this has to go through our solicitor, so he is dealing with it. So it seems we will now not get an answer (on whether Santander will remove this condition and accept we take out a new building insurance policy) for yet another ten days, at least, probably more, and then the answer may well be no and we may be right back at the beginning.
My question is - we are minded to just start again with another lender. Is there any reason (apart from the possible loss of any fees we pay) that we cannot start another mortgage application whilst we wait for the outcome of the existing application?
Santander are so slow, and really give the impression that they don't want to lend us the money. They have absolutely no sense of urgency - staff when I ring always express surprise that I am under any type of time pressure, or that I might think a turn around time of ten days for any communication is not reasonable for a mortgage company.
(We applied through a broker and I have contacted her to say we need an answer from Santander by the end of next week and I would like her to try to speed the process up but I'm not holding my breath there...)
Second question - I just can't understand this whole idea of transferring the benefit of building insurance policy. I have been told the reason to do it is that the insurer cannot say that a problem pre-date you starting your policy. It seems to be asking the insurer to take on a retrospective risk and I can't see why any would agree to do it Has anyone experience of this or can explain it?
Thanks
We are more than two months into the process of buying a house (and selling), and all the legalities (which were not straightforward) are almost sorted out, and we could very soon exchange contracts except .... we have still not had our mortgage offer confirmed by Santander. They have made it a condition that we get the seller's buildings insurance transferred to us, because of a problem which their valuer identified, but which our building surveyor and a structural engineer we paid to do a detailed report both think is insignificant.
The seller's insurance company will not agree to transfer the insurance.
It seems to take Santander 10 days for any piece of information to get from arriving with them to being seen by anyone who can make a decision. I have rung them to discuss the insurance problem to try to speed things up but they say this has to go through our solicitor, so he is dealing with it. So it seems we will now not get an answer (on whether Santander will remove this condition and accept we take out a new building insurance policy) for yet another ten days, at least, probably more, and then the answer may well be no and we may be right back at the beginning.
My question is - we are minded to just start again with another lender. Is there any reason (apart from the possible loss of any fees we pay) that we cannot start another mortgage application whilst we wait for the outcome of the existing application?
Santander are so slow, and really give the impression that they don't want to lend us the money. They have absolutely no sense of urgency - staff when I ring always express surprise that I am under any type of time pressure, or that I might think a turn around time of ten days for any communication is not reasonable for a mortgage company.
(We applied through a broker and I have contacted her to say we need an answer from Santander by the end of next week and I would like her to try to speed the process up but I'm not holding my breath there...)
Second question - I just can't understand this whole idea of transferring the benefit of building insurance policy. I have been told the reason to do it is that the insurer cannot say that a problem pre-date you starting your policy. It seems to be asking the insurer to take on a retrospective risk and I can't see why any would agree to do it Has anyone experience of this or can explain it?
Thanks