A property inspection is not required at all and never has been, even if you are living with family or friends.
If you will be living with family or friends you need:
- a letter from the family/friends inviting you to live with them and stating that the property will not be overcrowded
- evidence that they own the property (land registry document/deed)
- mortgage statements if they have a mortgage.
The only issue you may have is if you did not include official evidence that they own the home... as you are usually expected to include the land registry document or deed to the home as well as the letter from them.
Thank you. Now I'm a little nervous but think the following would apply:
http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/policyandlaw/immigrationlaw/immigrationrules/appendix-fmse/ [nofollow] (ii) Has not submitted a specified document, the decision-maker may contact the applicant or his representative in writing or otherwise, and request the document(s) or the correct version(s). The material requested must be received at the address specified in the request within a reasonable timescale specified in the request.
(c)
The decision-maker will not request documents where he or she does not anticipate that addressing the error or omission referred to in sub-paragraph (b) will lead to a grant because the application will be refused for other reasons.I'm thinking if proof of ownership was needed and it was the only item missing, they would have likely contacted me for the information based on the above (hopefully I'm not being too naive). Our friends own their house, have lived there for 40 years and are mortgage-free. They provided their contact information in their letter and haven't been contacted. I think the rest of our application should be pretty straight-forward as we proved we have well in excess of the required funds and have held them for much longer than the 6 months required. I did indicate in our application that we intend to live there temporarily until we are able to find our new home, so likely a week or less.
I took the supporting document information from this:
http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/sitecontent/documents/out-of-country/sup-docs-settlement.pdf [nofollow] Accommodation details You may wish to submit any of the following documents to provide us with evidence of your accommodation. We advise that you do not make any payments for accommodation, travel and so on until you have received your visa.
Details of the accommodation that you and your sponsor intend to live in and
permission for you to stay there along with evidence of any other occupants
This
could include:
Land Registry documents
mortgage statements
rent book or tenancy agreement
council tax statements
property inspection report
utilities bills
accommodation details with a supporting letter from the occupant/ landlord
confirming that you are able to stay there.I'll let you know what happens on Wednesday!