Sips and stones may break my bones...

Looking good! All nice and tidy too!  Your experience is the same as mine - as middle men, their job should be easy but they somehow can arse up even the most simple tasks. There is no excuse for it especially given their fee. What they do is not difficult, it's just extraordinary bad management and organisation. When the time comes for the remainder of the fee, refuse to pay - and also raise with the ombudsman to raise a formal complaint. Companies like Buildstore will never learn until  either business goes elsewhere(unlikely) or people stop paying the full fee on reasonable grounds. 

Bet you cannot wait for the sips to go up. Its Quick so don't blink as you will miss it. I went to work and came back with the ground and first floor up.

Yes. I think the problem is they have an ever increasing near monopoly and since less and less lenders will deal direct, there is no pressure on them to improve. Conversely, I've heard nothing but good about the lender from people who have used them, so unless BS manage to mess it up and it doesn't go through, hopefully in a few weeks we'll just be dealing direct with the lender.

Well, thanks to Buildloan (the mortgage arm of Buildstore) hanging on to everything for at least a month before submitting it, everything is now at a standstill house build wise. I'm told everything is now with the mortgage provider, but you know, I've really lost all confidence in Buildloan/Builstore (hereafter BS -  which by happy coincidence matches nicely with an American term!) so we don't really know. I'm told by BS that the lenders now do a due diligence check where someone separate goes over the whole application  from scratch again, which makes sense, and that this is happening now. But it's hard not knowing if we'll hear in 1 day, 1 week, 1 month or several months (just heard from someone who it took 8 months for from applying direct to their lender! - and that's without BS in between them to slow things up even further). I'm looking forward to when we can just deal direct with the lender.

Meantime I'm starting to build the garage and I've a retaining wall to do as well, so there is plenty to be physically doing at weekends (and hopefully a couple of hours on weeknights after work as daylight lengthens).

 

I'm quite enjoying building the garage, (though it will be with some trepidation when I have to get the BR guy to check my work at the DPC stage as I've never laid blocks or bricks before, but am following the rules and doing my best - thank goodness for YouTube and Jon Collinsons excellent book on Brickwork) as it feels like doing something "proper" at last (rather than all this sort of frustrating thing and the regiments of people we've had to pay handsomely over a year for simply shuffling bits of paper round so far or granting their gracious permission, for example, to let us alter the National Parks s106 agreement to allow our daughter to inherit our house (yes, really, the mandatory agreement the National Park forces you to agree to does not allow inheritance as a disposal of the house!... unless you pay their solicitor £200 to "allow" it, you'd be signing that right away! ). So there is definitely something satisfying in this sort of labour.

 

"Clarty boots"

Our daughter helping build the garage - she picked it up faster than I did.

20 hours ago, curlewhouse said:

Our daughter helping build the garage - she picked it up faster than I did.

 

What a fab picture. In years to come when she inherits the house I'm sure that picture will become a prize possession. 

Well, emailed Buildloan/BS just after 6a.m before leaving the house on Tuesday (its now Thursday), just asking if there is any progress as we've heard nothing more...  true to form, the agent who is overseeing/administering our job hasn't replied even to say she's got the email and is enquiring. Given how much they charge, their service is absolutely shockingly bad (remember they did not even bother to do the initial paperwork until I enquired after not hearing from them for an entire month!).  Right now, I'd recommend no one to use them if at all possible as it's been nothing but bother. The only "service" I'd say we've got that we couldn't do ourselves (to the lenders satisfaction) would be the costings (though we did have a QS printout done ourselves) , and that's the only bit which took a reasonable amount of time, everything else I've had to force them to get on with. If we don't chase them up, simply nothing happens. It is adding completely unnecessary stress, especially when you consider, their job is supposed to be smoothing the way for you, not adding extra obstacles.  Our builder is asking me if I can give a date as he needs to book jobs, so at this rate we could lose him ! 

 

Meanwhile, in the real world, I've got 3 days off booked next week and have hired another digger for 2 (wasn't one available on the Monday) and am going to start levelling out some of that mountain (1 of topsoil, 1 of subsoil) shown further up this page, due to it clearly being a hazard to low flying aircraft  .  Looking forward to that as I found it quite enjoyable using the digger last time, especially when you've moved soil by spade so have a good feel for how much physical labour even 5 minutes on a digger saves!

 

Edited March 16, 2017 by curlewhouse

**Update**   Took the bull by the horns and contacted the Building Society direct- wow, they could not be more different. Nice, efficient, helpful and explained to me that we are looking about midweek next week, and that I should feel free to ring them any time!   So that's a weight off my shoulders. There's no reason at all we shouldn't get it, but you need to see that bit of paper before committing further money, just in case. 

What a pain.

 

Do you know why the building society doesn't accept direct applications?

The few bank/building societies I spoke to say that self build lending is a small component of their business and makes it expensive to have in house expertise. 

 

Normal mortgage underwriting (risk assessments) are mostly automated and in some instances where an 'exception' occurs, a human looks at the application. But normal mortgages are just tick box exercises

- income

- affordability calculation 

- house value

- past history of payments (ccj, other repaid loads etc)

  

each lender just assigns a different weight to each component

 

with self build, development risk comes into play, more worryingly is development by a complete amateur. 

 

By using brokers like BuildStore, they relay on their 'expertise'. More importantly, if buildstore referred borrowers exhibit higher than expected defaults, the lender pulls the self build mortgage or revises its relationship with the broker. 

 

Much much easier to sit in a board room and blame the other guy (brokers)

 

i am am not a broker 

 

 

 

I know the Melton were superb but just after ours was approved they stopped going direct. They had one guy in Grantham doing applications and he was stacked out but theirs was one of the last advance mortgage products. 

 

They are very switched on when it comes to processing but I guess it's easier to let a broker do the donkey work. 

 

I've yet to meet their assessor for the stage payments but we will see what happens then ..!

Well, it just gets worse. We are now being asked for P60s back to 2013 ! I will say up front that we both have full employment histories, 1st class credit ratings, and not a missed payment in our entire lives, never mind such a thing as a CCJ, but it almost feels like they are looking hard to try and find something we can't possibly answer/produce. The reason I feel this way is because common sense would dictate that as the lender you would ask for all the details you want up front, as that saves a lot of your admin time - but it's been one document at a time asked for, over months now, and they get increasingly obscure as we go on  (what my job in 2013 can possibly have to do with our ability to pay in 2017, or 2020 is clearly nil). The last one was I had to dig out my contract of employment for 2014 - but  when I managed that, they then wanted the P60 from 2013, and we are just working our way backwards like that. Sods law I've got all my P60s from 2001 except for 2013!  My suspicion is that in the manner of the old game (probably not a PC name any more) of "Chinese Whispers" something is going astray/misunderstood when passed through the filter of Buildloan/store (never mind their shockingly sitting on it all for over a month at the start) and we are now on someone's radar at the lender as somehow dodgy!   As a result, today it looks like our builder has had to give up our "slot" and book someone else in. An irritation normally, but we really struggled to find a good builder willing to do the work up here for some reason (we are 22 miles from the nearest market town, but hardly the Outer Hebrides) so that could mean we've lost this year. My poor wife is in tears tonight as we are starting to wonder if we've wasted the tens of thousands of pounds spent so far. I've no doubt we can get a lender as the sums all add up and we are squeaky clean, but if no progress by the end of this week I think we'll have lost the builder for 2017.  We did think we were out of the hands of the clerks etc, but obviously not, and are finally beginning to question if it's really worth the stress or if we should just sell and cut our losses now. 

Digger booked tomorrow so I'll have to go and do that anyway. 

Edited March 20, 2017 by curlewhouse

That's unreal - really sorry to hear that, you know I feel your pain. I could go on and on about the appalling service from BUildstore but would be saying nothing new - a lot of my work is around process design and in short - they have none. No proper, consistent processes. No case management system. No effective SLAs. No proper customer service. Lazy staff is a large part of it I suspect as well. 

 

I'm afraid I don't have any suggestions in this regard - our experience was so bad that when the barn fell through, we decided that we would never use a mortgage to build the house. For a start, you have the mortgage fee. Then have to take out the warranty. And pay a higher interest rate. And are constrained by state payments (in our case only arrears)....you can easily add £10k on just in mortgage related fees. 

 

It might not be what you and your wife want to think about - but - seeing your daughter pitch in with the garage - is a true self build an option for you? Okay - it'll take longer, be hard graft, BUT it will cost significantly less and, arguably - be less stressful because you don't have the serious constraints of mortgages, warranties, stage payments etc etc. Also, it means you work at your own pace as and when financing allows. 

 

It's not something to take on easily, more of a life choice than anything. But you are out the ground. How much to get wind and water tight then finish the rest yourself? 

 

Have a think - it might take you twice as long but you could finish by having no mortgage....

 

 

 

 

I had some similar mortgage issues on our build - and with a render and timber clad flat roof I only had a couple of potential lenders. We went with Ecology in the end - they've been really good and helpful (to the point this week they phoned me up and said we were due a rate reduction as we met a certain epc rating). My only caveat is they did raise the threshold of the energy performance the property needs to meet (they use this as a means of controlling their level of lending). It was at passivhaus only but it may have been reduced since. I'm sure someone on the forum might know current rules?

Well, after an awful night, the Building society rang me very first thing and said everything is fine and the issue was never in doubt at thier end ! Offer coming out this week.  On hearing the issues he gave me his direct number and said "look, just deal direct with me from now".  Not impressed with Buildloan!

So I can sympathize with that ..! 

 

Have you got your warranty sorted ..? If not I can give you a direct contact for a warranty provider and cut the broker out of that one too ..!

5 hours ago, curlewhouse said:

Well, after an awful night, the Building society rang me very first thing and said everything is fine and the issue was never in doubt at thier end ! Offer coming out this week.  On hearing the issues he gave me his direct number and said "look, just deal direct with me from now".  Not impressed with Buildloan!

 

What a relief eh!!?

 

Did you manage to keep your builder or had he already given your slot to someone else?

great news!  hope the builder is available too.

The builder says he will "fit us in" sort of thing (he's got a few guys working for him)  and the SIPS people say July now for thier part. So the Buildstore/buildloan delays have meant everything's knocked back at least 3 months from what it should be and lost us some certainty over how many guys we'll have working on the build now & hence it's speed, and we will have to renew our tenancy of our temporary home (or get a caravan maybe, though my wife is not keen on that idea), it also means I'll have to hire a crane for the SIPs as the builder was going to use his machine but that will be elsewhere now.   Interestingly enough Buildstore have not rang me to tell me the mortgage is approved - which makes me think perhaps the building society have spoken to them.   

But needless to say we are hugely relieved. Fortunately our warranty and BR people are not with Buildstore so hopefully we will soon (if not already) not have to have anything more to with them.

Mud, mud, glorious mud! ?  . Digging came to a halt today. I got a lot of subsoil levelled out yesterday but rain very definitely stopped play today.

Pah, you think that's muddy.......

 

I had to dig out twice and in the end we put down old tin sheet to spread the weight of the caterpillar tracks to get out. It was bellying out was the issue really. First thing this morning it was snow so it was never going to be a brilliant day, but it just turned to rain. I got more done than I thought but had to give up.  A shame to have to stop when the machine is hired, but I'd have just messed the whole site up if I continued.

 

So is that still there as a garden fixture? ?

Edited March 22, 2017 by curlewhouse

16 minutes ago, curlewhouse said:

 

So is that still there as a garden fixture? ?

 

No, an old guy ( neighbour) who was a JCB driver all his working life got it out by putting it in four wheel drive, revving it loads and using front and rear buckets at the same time and walked it out. I didn't have the bottle to try that.

Well, still tearing hair out at artificial delays. The solicitor we've used is a big firm down country but have a truly bizarre way of working. Its a fixed price paid up front, and a good competitive price compared to our local solicitors - but once you've paid they will not let you speak to your solicitor!  First indication things were amiss was a message from my dear friends at Buildloan/BS saying the building society had contacted the solicitor to progress things no less than 5 times and still not had a response. So I rang the solicitors to enquire, only to be told your not allowed to speak to her, she works from home and only works by email ! I actually thought we were being scammed at first, as 20 years working in the criminal justice system (and a law degree), and I've never heard  of a solicitor who will not speak to clients. So I emailed her... no response. So after a couple of days I emailed and said I was going to the Law Society....  that got a response .  So OK, she says she has responded to the Building Society (and since the message she had not came via Buildloan, I've no idea who is giving the correct version TBH).  So one of the issues with Buildloan was the drip feeding of request for documents instead of asking for everything they needed at once .... turns out this solicitor is doing exactly the same thing. I emailed and explained the delays due to BL/BS and how thus we are weeks behind where we should be with the mortgage, yet they are doing the exact same thing.  Then yesterday I get an automated out of office reply saying she's away for the rest of the month! So someone else is picking her work up apparently. So I thought I'd better give her a call and just explain that we'd given notice of our tenancy so needed quick action..... and guess what? Your not allowed to speak to her either!  I've never come across this before. I can understand if you've got a nasty client, but this is their policy before you've ever had any dealings. So we are back to drip feed requests for documents  which they claim the building society is asking for... only some are ones we sent in months ago. In some ways it's just as well they are a long way off as it stops me going down and shouting at them! 

On ‎22‎/‎03‎/‎2017 at 20:37, joe90 said:

 

No, an old guy ( neighbour) who was a JCB driver all his working life got it out by putting it in four wheel drive, revving it loads and using front and rear buckets at the same time and walked it out. I didn't have the bottle to try that.

I part dragged myself out using the bucket, but as it only has one it was literally a couple of inches at a time. The hire company charged me an extra £20 to clean the machine - which was completely fair enough as the machine was about 40% mud when they collected it!   . No mains water on site yet so I couldn't pressure wash it first.