This is one of those odd cases in that its probably not the sort of application many brokers come across or certainly not regularly. However at Mortgage Success it is a bread and butter type of application albeit there were a few quirks.
The applicants were looking to purchase a new home – nothing unusual there! However, there were a couple of hurdles to overcome…
Adverse
There were 3 defaults from last year. All of them were for credit cards/store cards and came to around £11,000 in total. As mentioned earlier, this is nothing we have not seen before and quite standard for us so we had no concerns at this stage.
Lending into retirement
This is something we do not do often and was strictly speaking not actually lending into retirement. However because of Mortgage lenders rules around retirement ages, it was treated this way. This is because one of the applicants was a little older but they had a job which they enjoyed and has no intention of ever retiring. Not uncommon with people in the academic field but still not something lender is prepared to overlook.
This meant we had to look at things like the balance at “their retirement age” and their income after retirement. The income was there and deemed affordable quite easily so in reality not overly complicated to overcome.
Overview
The LTV was relatively low, the deposit came from equity in their current home and the income was there. All things considered, there were plenty of positives.
The problem however was the 2 issues combined! When we look at adverse there are only a limited number of lenders available. Likewise, when we look at lending into retirement there are only a limited number of lendders available.
This is where we need a Ven diagram! Lenders that overlap in the middle are few and far between.
However, we managed to get there. But what is most impressive about this application (and I think this shows how good we actually are!… please ignore the inflated ego…) is that we submitted this application all noted up, explaining everything and we had the offer* issued within the day!
Why the astrix I hear you asking?
Simply, it was offered subject to valuation. A surveyor needed to visit the property in order to confirm it was suitable security.
But the applicants could go into the next day knowing that they were good for the mortgage and the only potential issue would have been the property. Their adverse, their retirement ages and income had all been approved and signed off.
Summary
I often say that adverse on its own is not something we struggle with. The problem is when it is combined with something else.
That happened here and although I make light about how quickly we had the offer issued. Prior to that about a weeks worth of research went into it. We had to firstly find a lender willing to do everything and then we had to find out what documents they would want and note up the application.
A lot of time and effort went into the application, but when we do everything well it can mean the more stressful part flies through quickly which makes everything a whole lot nicer.