When we were looking we heard a lot of yes' from estate agents which should have been no's. We were told that we could complete within 3 weeks, but the searches alone took around 10 weeks.
Yeah. 10-12 weeks is pretty standard. I've just bought a house and it was pretty much exactly 10 weeks from putting in an offer to completing... and that was faster than I was expecting.
The general timeline I got from my mortgage broker was as follows:
Start: Offer accepted
Days 1-2: bring in documents, instruct solicitor
Weeks 1-2: solicitor searches and survey
Weeks 2-3: mortgage offer and mortgage review
Weeks 8-10: insurances put in place, contracts exchanged and deposit paid
POINT OF NO RETURN
Weeks 10-12: Completion, pay legal fees, pay stamp duty, move in
For us, we had to do an affordability calculator with ours. For us, that included details of all our outgoings. We also had to provide bank statements. It'd be pretty hard to hide a major outgoing ,such as regular payments on a loan, from our mortgage company to make it appear as though we could afford more.
Yep, lots of paperwork involved - as of about 2 years ago, they started being more thorough with checking your income and outgoings for mortgage applications, because I think people were finding they couldn't afford the repayments because of their high outgoings. So now the mortgage companies check to make sure you can afford to keep up the repayments even if they increase.
I had to bring in:
- photo ID... passport AND driving licence
- Proof of address (utility bill, mortgage statement, Inland Revenue document), dated within 3 months
- 4 months of payslips
- 4 months of bank statements
- P60
- Proof of deposit funds
- Mortgage Statement (if applicable)
- Last month's credit card statement
- Documents on any loans or hire purchase
- Proof of any benefits received
- Marriage or birth certificates if different from ID
- evidence of maternity leave (if applicable)
- Pension statement (if interest only or lending into retirement)
- Proof of residency/visa (if applicable)
I also needed to provide the following information:
- company sick pay allowance
- buildings/contents insurance
- existing insurance policy details
The mortgage advisor also went through all my monthly expenses to check out much disposal income I had each month (and she estimated high on most of them to give more leeway):
- rent
- bills
- council tax
- insurance
- food
- transport
- exact amounts on my current credit card bills
- clothing
- socialising