Normally I try to write success stories on things that either push our knowledge or applications where I think some people in similar situations may think they have no chance. I like to do that in order to give them a confidence boost to get in touch.
However the last month or so we have not really had anything like that. We have had a few quirky cases but nothing all that complicated or “exciting”.
The tight affordability case
Due to the increasing rates and cost of living one thing we are beginning to see more than previous is applications that 12 months ago would have flown through on affordability. However they are now becoming a bit of a problem.
This particular case was for some customers of ours who we have looked after for about 6-7 years. We have done maybe 3 mortgages for them in that time. They are both in good jobs, well paid very little debt but they do have 2 kids and some childcare costs, nothing too bad though… or so we thought.
There was nothing I was concerned about and was expecting no issues with this. I plugged in the figures on our sourcing system and did a DIP with the cheapest lender – FAILED!
I was that surprised, I went back through the application to see what I had done wrong. There were no mistakes that I could see. I called my account manager at the mortgage lender. It turned out it had just simply failed on affordability due to them living in London and the cost of living there being higher than elsewhere.
I then went and looked at the next few lenders and it failed with the second lender. The third option it passed with. We submitted that and all was fine. This was only marginally more expensive than the cheaper 2 products.
The EU national case & gifted deposit from abroad
This is not an overly complicated application. It is something we do not come across massively but he was referred to us by one of our existing customers.
The EU national element was not a problem. He has the right to live and work in the UK due to his pre-settled status so all good on that front.
His deposit however was coming from an EU country but was still in that country at the time of application. Most lenders want to see the money in the UK for between 1 day and 30 days, maybe longer with some lenders. We were able to find a lender who had no requirements on that. They left it to the solicitors to satisfy their requirements.
We helped the client to find a solicitor who would work with the client and what they had to find a way to make it work and satisfy their requirements. That mortgage has now been offered and the legal work is currently going through. We do not anticipate any issues as we have checked everything upfront.
Thats about it!
All of the rest of our cases this month have been about as vanilla as you can get. That is a nice change, but it does not make for a great read on the success stories.
We have some more complicated applications which have gone in though so hopefully we can write about them down the line. I dont like to write about applications in process as I do not like to tempt fate.