Difficult Property!

We were asked to help a lovely couple aiming to buy an historic property on a Country Estate. A beautiful property with huge potential, complete with a holiday cottage and roughly 20 acres of “pinch-me” countryside. A dream home, absolutely… but also a bit of a mortgage maze.

They’d checked with their High Street lender about porting their existing mortgage which had a great rate under 2% and a £10,000 early repayment charge. The answer? After many weeks, a resounding decline, no explanation, and no appeal process. Don’t figure!

Now this was odd — because the figures worked easily. So why the shutdown?

Cue the detective work. After a flurry of calls between the clients, the existing lender, estate agent, and even the surveyor (old school friend), the real issue emerged: the lender didn’t like the property. Too much of a good thing turns out to be a problem in some situations. Is it true…could less actually be more?

So, after establishing the problem, an experienced team can start fixing the situation. It was not the applicants, not the affordability, nor any credit concerns….Just the quirky, characterful, slightly-too-interesting property.

After a lot of negotiation / communication with the selling agents on behalf of the customers we went back to their lender, reshaped the proposal, and within a week… the very same lender who’d said “absolutely not” issued a very cheerful Mortgage Offer.

Some say you don’t need a mortgage broker. Some say online systems are enough…But if you spoke to this couple, they’d tell you that local knowledge and experience were the difference between losing their dream home — and enjoying the lovely views from the huge bay window in the front room.