DIYbanter - View Single Post - what's the point of all this DIY? (house move nightmare)

Lobster

wrote:

Recently I have tried to move to house number 4 - a dilapidated
bungalow. At £225,000 it would leave me £75,000 to do the place up. I
planned new everything and an extension.

This is now not going to happen - cos I can't get a mortgage. I've had
two surveyors round and one said 'the mortgage company would not offer
a mortgage' and the other said 'congratulations, we are pleased to
offer you a mortgage of £190,000... with a retention of £190,000 until
you do the following jobs (proceeded to list all the electics, all the
plumbing, the roof and the walls!)

I've fallen foul of this myself in the past - property not inhabitable
as defined by the Housing Act therefore 100% mortgage retention, and I
had to walk away. Bloody ridiculous. I'm sure there are lenders out
there who will lend under such circumstances; the trick is to find who
they are before you've paid out on arrangement fees and surveyors etc.

I think you probably need to do it via a bank loan rather than a
mortgage; obviously much more expensive - then work like crazy on the
specific Housing Act criteria until the place can be defined as
'inhabitable' (might need a temporary kitchen sink/toilet/bath
installed; that sort of thing) then apply for a mortgage ASAP.

The fact that rewiring appears to be one of the mortgage criteria would
I have thought make this idea pretty well impossible in the case of your
property though - hard to do a quick lash-up there. :-(

David