Joanna Susskind

We have a few banks who are willing to do it, it's just taking months for it to go through so I'm looking for anyone in a similar situation? The BTL market is not the same as regular as they don't look at our income (they look at the fact that we have another BTL with a high monthly rental income and a property with a lot of equity). Spoke to my mortgage advisor last night who said it will go through, it's just taking a LONG time due to banks now being so risk averse. Im still worried it won't go through but he insists it will! Anyone else managed to remortgage at all???

Terrible time to sell! People on the street still building and the market isn't right...

We are Airbnbing... Need to remortgage!

Hey all, We have been trying to remortgage for almost 2 years. Our independant broker keeps going quiet on us (he's helped get us great deals on remortgaging 3 times in the past!). He insisted we get a Structural Warranty, which we did get, and now we've decided to switch to a BTL, and we NEED to get some of the equity out of the house as we're completely skint and monthly repayments are excessive, but AGAIN he's gone quiet on us. I spoke to another independent broker, who was all excited and keen, until 3 weeks later he says lenders are saying no because of the type of construction. (Our house is made entirely of wood). We have Completion, Habitation, been living here 2 almost 3 years, we have the 10 year Structural Warranty, AND we've already moved out and just want to switch to BTL and start renting. We are both self employed. Are we completely stuck?? This seems so crazy and I just can't seem to find a way out. We are still with Ecology on the Self Build mortgage and they can't offer us any more... Thanks for your help. Joanna

Hey all, sorry if this has already been answered (couldn't seem to find any more info in the thread). We have been trying to remortgage for almost 2 years. Our independant broker keeps going quiet on us (he's helped get us great deals on remortgaging 3 times in the past!). He insisted we get a Structural Warranty, which we did get, and now we've decided to switch to a BTL, and we NEED to get some of the equity out of the house as we're completely skint and monthly repayments are excessive, but AGAIN he's gone quiet on us. I spoke to another independent broker, who was all excited and keen, until 3 weeks later he says lenders are saying no because of the type of construction. (Our house is made entirely of wood). We have Completion, Habitation, been living here 2 almost 3 years, we have the 10 year Structural Warranty, AND we've already moved out and just want to switch to BTL and start renting. We are both self employed. Are we completely stuck?? This seems so crazy and I just can't seem to find a way out. We are still with Ecology on the Self Build mortgage and they can't offer us any more... Thanks for your help. Joanna

Yes indeed. We've already spoken to Halifax who are happy with the PCC we're going to provide. The inspector is coming Friday! Delighted! And sure enough, only 4 months in and we'll have made up the difference... Wish I had looked in to this a year ago!! But hopefully all good now. https://www.pwaarchitects.co.uk/services/retrospective-architects-certificates-inc-retrocert These are the people we're using btw. RIBA Architects. We've done our research - learnt a lot through this house building business!

Thanks everyone. We now have a quote for £2000 to do a retrospective survey and inspection for a 10 year PCC (which was the Architect's Certificate previously here in Scotland) - The guy can come out this week to inspect and our bank seems happy... Easy?! Wish I had come on here for advice a year ago!!! Thanks for all the help. x

Thanks, yes, sounds like I need to make some phone calls first. Our broker couldn't find anyone who didn't need the warrant, which is how we ended up here... But if you say Virgin and Bank of Ireland didn't need it, then I ought to get in touch with them myself!

Thanks - I'll look in to CMLC! We did sign that form at the outset, but our architect says that we didn't finalise the inspections part of it... Should I go through the form with a fine toothed comb?

Thank you! Do you have more information for me to search? When I Googled CML I found a rare type of blood cancer!

You are exactly right. We built through the first lockdowns when people literally weren't leaving the house. We did every single thing ourselves. We did live in a caravan - it was burnt to the ground! We had a very hard time. Our architect was not able to travel from Edinburgh to Glasgow to inspect until much later when we were nearly complete. We never planned to sell, and had to push through, so we didn't realise at the time that no architect sign-off would cause us problems. We had Building Control signing off and our building society/valuation people onsite regularly. The architect is not saying much, just that he wasn't formally appointed to do the inspections. We had his site visits scheduled and budgeted in to our build. They just didn't happen... So now he's being very awkward about doing the report retrospectively.

Hey all, We completed our house build about 6 months ago in Glasgow. We have our Habitation Certificate, we have our SER, we have all the forms, but since we built during lockdown we had no architect site visits as planned. This means we have no structural warranty. Our architect is being very difficult about issuing the certificate and doing the inspections retrospectively. We are on an extremely high interest self build mortgage. Banks won’t lend so we cannot remortgage without the warranty. This was not part of the plan! Should I keep on at my architect to provide some kind of documentation? Should I go direct to a few lenders and explain the situation? Should I just suck it up and pay the £10k(?!) or so for a warranty after the fact? Would love some advice, thanks. Joanna

Hey Conor This is great to hear! We are based in Scotland and have finished our build a few years ago. We have completion and habitation, just no warranty as it was built during lockdown… Wonder if Virgin would help us remortgage? I don’t see anything about self builds on their website… keen to know more, thanks!

Hello! Did you find out any more about this?

This sounds like exactly what we need. Our project is complete though, and we have our habitation cert and full sign off. Do you think they would still do this? We also have an architect, but he couldn’t do the site visits due to covid. I wonder if there’s something he could produce instead? Thanks!