Mortgages are taking longer than usual to be approved.
Lenders are taking longer than usual to process mortgage applications, much to potential home buyers’ frustration.
This problem has been attributed to strong demand, the increased complexity of the Covid-19 application, and, with purchase to rent, the difficulty in scheduling surveyors’ visits to leased properties.
When writing this article, Santander is taking 26.2 business days for purchase-to-rent applications to be offered through a broker.
Meanwhile, for The Mortgage Works (Nationwide’s buy-to-let branch), it currently takes 25 days for a standard buy-to-let request to become a reality and 34 days for portfolio and limited partnership cases.
It is less extreme on the residential side, but the process is still slow, as NatWest takes 22 days to handle purchase requests and 21 days for remortgage offers. Nationwide spends 23 days in standard residential and 24 in referral, while Santander takes 21.3 days.
A Santander spokeswoman said: “We regret that processing times are a bit higher than we would generally work, and we can assure clients that our team is working hard to process the high volume of mortgage applications that we are receiving so much in residences as in purchase mortgages to rent “.
When asked about these delays, a Nationwide spokeswoman said strong demand was due to the stamp tax holiday.
Additionally, as one of the few lenders handling 90% LTV cases, the number of applications the lender has received has increased.
Unsurprisingly, Covid-19 was also mentioned, which has led to some cases being more complex, resulting in underwriters carefully reviewing applications.
When it comes to buy-to-let, both Nationwide and Santander noted that surveyors take time to get into leased properties in the current climate, making applications take an unusually long time.
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