Currently buying/selling a house? How is it going? READ MOD NOTE POST #1

Has anyone drawn down a mortgage with Finance Ireland recently? How long did it take from the day the solicitor requested drawdown & what documents (payslips, statements etc) did you need to provide during this process? Thanks

The total time for loan offer was around 20 days for us. Once we received the pre offer call we had the loan offer in our inbox’s within 5 days

Around 6/7 working days.

4 weeks would be pretty quick imo. Today is 100 days from the day we went sale agreed and we still don't have our closing date. Sellers still don't have their own purchase straightened out. We've been waiting more than 4 weeks just since their solicitor has received their own contract to buy and they haven't gotten everything straightened out.

It's quite stressful. I've definitely had heightened cortisol levels the past few weeks worrying that it still might fall apart since there is no final contract and we have had no date, just constantly being told it's just a few more days away. Just feel like it's hard to get settled with anything because it's always in the back of my mind.

I'm currently dealing with Finance Ireland and my solicitor says that in his 40 years of dealing with banks, they are by far the best!

Hopefully it all happens soon for you

Bloody hell. Fortunately only dealt with one so could well be true.

I’m sure be all sorted in the next few days.

I’m just terrified something will go wrong before everything is over the line. I don’t think i can go through all this again.

thank you.

Yes, it is possible to get a waiver. My partner and I couldn't get insured either (I was fine, but she had a rare condition, that even though it wasn't fatal or anything, none of the insurers would touch), but thankfully did get a mortgage protection waiver. I still have to take out a policy for myself, but she does not. I can't say how hard they are to get though, only have a sample size of 1 to draw on, but the impression I got was that they are not given out that often. It might be different for a single person too, as you won't have a second income to potentially pay off the rest of the mortgage.

What I would say is start getting the mortgage insurance done ASAP. If you think there's potentially something iffy about your health then they'll either take a while to approve you (since they'll want your GP to write a report) or they will tell you you won't get cover. Either way, get the result as quickly as possible. Once you have some rejections (in our case 2, but I've heard some ask for 3), you can probably talk to your broker or bank contact about applying for a waiver. If they won't give it to you, better to find out early before you find a house and start bidding, and if they will then it will give you a lot of peace of mind when you do get to that stage. If the bank won't give it to you early on, you'll also have a chance to shop around with some other banks who might be a bit more lenient (brokers might be able to help a bit more with this too).

As far as what might make it easier to get one, I would say that if you have some kind of other life cover in place already (such as from your employer) then that does help, especially if it covers the remainder of the mortgage amount. It also probably helps to have a lower Loan-to-Value ratio if you can help it (e.g. you put in a deposit of say 20% instead of 10%).

Get an engineer, there is no come back after.

The place we are buying (closing on Monday yusss!) was going to auction. We actually talked them out of it by putting a bid on before the auction, subject to removal from auction. However this is a rural location in the midlands and was a quiet time during the summer. Your situation may be different but talk to the ea, have a viewing, if you really like it get an engineer. You might be lucky and it won't go auction, a lot of people don't like auctions and very hard to do unless your paying cash.

If it was in a town, yes there's a good chance the property may have issues but auctions are common in a rural setting with farms/parcels of land.

Did they send the loan offer to both you and your solicitor or just your solicitor?

Today is day 9. The postie just been and no loan offer. Can’t wait not to have to deal with them anymore.

That's just how auctions work. The idea is your bidding is final and binding.

You would generally engage a surveyor before bidding and read the legal pack etc. You only look at houses that aren't opening before you've had a chance to do all the above.

Put our house on the market last week. However two estate agents for houses we are interested in won’t even entertain us with bidding. One for a place in Naas even told us we were not allowed come to the viewing unless we have gone sale agreed with our current property. Had this always been the way or is it just now? It’s very frustrating

Very frustrating indeed. Been there many times.This happens when the vendor have specific instruction that they will only sell to people not on chain. Just keep trying with other properties. In the meantime keep your house in the market. You don’t have to go sale agreed if you can’t find a house. Or you can go sale agreed but be honest with your purchaser that they might be in for a long wait.