Has anyone used buildloan?

[bmt216a]

Hello,

 

planning to start my new build spring this year. Just getting my self build mortgage together. I originally wanted to approach ecology but there website says they’re only taking SAP rating 88% or above and ours is 80%.
 

My mortgage broker has suggested buildloan.co.uk and is currently getting some figures for me.
 

Ive not heard of buildloan before, has anyone had any experience with them? 
 

thanks

Ian  

[Dave Jones]

get a new SAP.

[SBMS]

We used buildloan. They were great and the mortgage broker was really good and got back to us with things like decision in principle within 48 hours. They fully understood how to present us to lender as am technically self employed with own company. Was able to pick the best lender based on how our income was assessed. 
 

We also opted for an advance stage mortgage which means funds are advanced prior to a certain stage being started - rather than a valuation and (hopeful) uplift at the end. Completely down to your appetite for risk and we paid a £4000 premium for ‘build out cover’ that goes hand in hand with the advance stage mortgage. Build out cover is for the benefit of the lender and is basically an insurance policy that pays out in the event we default and provides lender the funds to finish the build on our behalf and recoup their lending. 
 

For me (and I know others will disagree) there’s enough risk in a self build without the worry whether your foundations have increased in value to the tune of what you’ve spent. So 4K was a reasonable price to totally mitigate this risk and mean we are always in theory cash flow positive during the build. Obviously if you’ve loads of equity, cash, or own plot outright this isn’t relevant! But for us, buildloan have worked out well. 

[SBMS]

Also you mentioned your mortgage broker has suggested buildloan. Just to clarify, buildloan are a financial intermediary - not a lender. It’s actually buildstore that we went with and they hand off to their sister company buildloan. Buildstore are a mortgage broker and I would suggest, if you’re looking at using buildloan, you use buildstore to package everything up.