Buildstore - using Furness Building Society

[SeanCrowley]

Hi, 

Has anyone got experience of using Buildstore (and more particularly with Furness Building Society as the lender?) - some of the comments on the forum are not overly positive about Buildstore but they have come up with what looks like a really quite competitive product (4.19%, £4500 fees including all the buildstore fees, but with no early repayment charge so hopefully after our 12 month build we can refinance very quickly onto a much cheaper rate).

However speed is quite important (once we get planning we really want to get going), and so I am a bit concerned at how long the timeframe might take them from planning approved (at which point we will have all the information e.g. detailed costings and contractor fixed price etc) before the first payment, when we really want to get on and get the existing building demolished and start work on site.

Any thoughts gratefully appreciated!

Edited February 19, 2021 by SeanCrowley

[LA3222]

It always amazes me that people even take buildstore seriously.

 

I cant praise Ecology enough, bloody easy to deal with and about £500 of fees all in iirc.

 

No staged payments, I can draw the money whenever the hell I like. I just need to ask Ecology to get it valued. £120 later they will do a BACS transfer to my account whenever I ask, free of charge.

 

Projected costings- just did my own on an excel spreadsheet which they were more than happy with. The main things they are interested in are, can you afford the mortgage, is the property worth sufficient against what you asking to borrow.

 

After that, you can 80% of its 'current' valuation.

 

Quick too.

Edited February 19, 2021 by LA3222

[Ralph]

We were going to go with Buildstore and Furness.

We eventually went with Ecology because they were a wee bit cheaper and everyone seemed to rave about them here.

We probably still have one more drawdown to go but over the last year Ecology have been excellent, really can't fault them. Very helpful and flexible.

[Moonshine]

I am going through a broker that deals with self builds and have positive review of him so far.

He has sorted out a remorgage of our eixting house which should complete in the next few weeks splitting the title of the plot of land / garden.

We can then get self build mrtgage on that, he is looking at the market and we are going to go through the options next week.

I'll let you know what I find out.

 

[SeanCrowley]

3 hours ago, LA3222 said:

It always amazes me that people even take buildstore seriously.

 

I cant praise Ecology enough, bloody easy to deal with and about £500 of fees all in iirc.

 

No staged payments, I can draw the money whenever the hell I like. I just need to ask Ecology to get it valued. £120 later they will do a BACS transfer to my account whenever I ask, free of charge.

 

Projected costings- just did my own on an excel spreadsheet which they were more than happy with. The main things they are interested in are, can you afford the mortgage, is the property worth sufficient against what you asking to borrow.

 

After that, you can 80% of its 'current' valuation.

 

Quick too.

Hi ecology do look brilliant plus cheap fees and low rates, but as we only have build programme of less than 12 months bring locked into the higher rate (even slightly reduced because of c charge) for the remaining 12 months unfortunately makes thousands of pounds of difference which is hard to ignore even though it sounds ecology are much better! 

[SeanCrowley]

1 hour ago, Moonshine said:

I am going through a broker that deals with self builds and have positive review of him so far.

He has sorted out a remorgage of our eixting house which should complete in the next few weeks splitting the title of the plot of land / garden.

We can then get self build mrtgage on that, he is looking at the market and we are going to go through the options next week.

I'll let you know what I find out.

 

Thanks so much! 

[LA3222]

33 minutes ago, SeanCrowley said:

Hi ecology do look brilliant plus cheap fees and low rates, but as we only have build programme of less than 12 months bring locked into the higher rate (even slightly reduced because of c charge) for the remaining 12 months unfortunately makes thousands of pounds of difference which is hard to ignore even though it sounds ecology are much better! 

With the best will in the world things may go wrong with the timescale. Have you got a main contractor taking on the job with a team of subbies then?

 

Ecology is 4.19%, a residential mortgage is knocking around the 1.5% mark at the minute. So, 2.7% difference, around £140 for every £100k borrowed.

 

For it to make thousands of pounds of difference you must have a small mortgage, if Buildstore makes sense financially I hope it all works out for you. Buildstore are a bit marmite, too many bad reviews and high fees for my liking but there are many that have used them without issue.

[SeanCrowley]

18 minutes ago, LA3222 said:

With the best will in the world things may go wrong with the timescale. Have you got a main contractor taking on the job with a team of subbies then?

 

Ecology is 4.19%, a residential mortgage is knocking around the 1.5% mark at the minute. So, 2.7% difference, around £140 for every £100k borrowed.

 

For it to make thousands of pounds of difference you must have a small mortgage, if Buildstore makes sense financially I hope it all works out for you. Buildstore are a bit marmite, too many bad reviews and high fees for my liking but there are many that have used them without issue.

Thanks, I think I would avoid BuildStore if I could for the reasons you say, but like your say with a 2.7% difference that's £2700 for the year for every 100k of borrowings which makes quite a difference. Fingers crossed as the bad reviews have prepared me for not the best experience with buildstore. Yes going down main contractor route. Thanks! 

[Evs]

I’m using buildstore for our self build but our lender is Hanley.

 

I would try other options next time, mainly because of their fee’s and they’re slow when trying to get things done. For example although taking the Christmas period into account, I applied for our last stage release on 18th November and didn’t receive the money until 7th January. Any emails you send them usually take a minimum of 48 hours for a response and if you’re firing a few emails back and forth, a short conversation which could be sorted in an hour, can take over a week.

 

There are positives. We had no issues getting our mortgage. That was all pretty straight forward and we didn’t have to go to the nth degree in regards to our projected costings. Everyone we’ve dealt with have been helpful, but they’re turnover of staff is tremendous. We’ve dealt with over 20 advisors since applying and our case has been passed from one person to the next due to employees leaving. 

 

Overall I wouldn’t say I’ve had a particularly bad experience so far, they’re just slow when getting things done which can be frustrating and their fee’s are high. I know people that have had excellent and bad experiences with both Buildstore and Ecology. I’m applying for our next draw off this coming week so I’ll let you know if they’re any quicker this time. 

Edited February 20, 2021 by Evs