Mortgage letter of offer expiry before completion of new build

Glaceon

My wife and I got a letter of offer from AIB for our mortgage last summer. The offer is for a new build house and is valid until mid-December. The house is under construction but I'm not sure if it will be completed by that date. The estate agent just gave us a vague "end of the year" completion date. At the time that the offer was given, our mortgage advisor said that we may need to apply for an extension but our solicitor said that extensions aren't usually given and it's more likely that we'll need to start all over again with a new mortgage application. Has anyone else experienced this and how did it go?

Deeec

Have you drawn down any of the mortgage staged payments yet? Surely if you have made a draw down this would mean that the mortgage offer was accepted and the expiry date doesn't matter anymore.

Glaceon

It's in an estate rather than being a self-build or one-off house. So no drawdown has taken place yet.

Q&A

If you're borrowing within the central bank limits and your circumstances have not changed there's no reason to worry.

It's just a procedural thing. Mortgage approval lasts for six months just a case of resubmitting up to date details. A bit of paper work but you should be good to go again.

Talk to the bank to get the ball rolling. They might be happy to update now your approval now.

Glaceon

I just thought I’d come back with an update. Thanks for the advice.

I contacted the mortgage advisor and she was great. We needed to do a new application form and send updated salary certs and payslips but there wasn’t much hassle to get it approved again. We do need to go back to our solicitor to sign the new letter of offer but I expected that.

Extended to June 2022 now, hopefully we won’t need it for that long!