How Long Does it Take to Apply For a Mortgage?
It’s always exciting when you get the opportunity to buy a house. However, it’s important to understand that when it comes to purchasing a house for yourself, it can often be a very arduous process that takes a lot of time. But how long does an application for a mortgage take?
To make sure that you have the best experience, you should definitely plan ahead and know what to expect, especially with getting a mortgage.
Thankfully, the first step of getting a mortgage is quite easy. What you need to do is apply for a mortgage agreement in principle. Basically, this is where the provider tells you how much you could borrow based on the information you give them about your finances and your credit score.
Like we said, you will have to do a credit check, and give them some basic financial information, but it is important to remember that just because you get a certain amount in principle, that doesn’t translate to the full amount that you get when all the paperwork is done.
It’s generally accepted that if the process for applying for your mortgage is easy, and everything runs as it should, you can get the mortgage offer about four weeks after your application. It’s worth noting there are many things that can affect how long it takes to get a mortgage. The coronavirus pandemic delayed a lot of mortgages because the entire industry ground to a halt.
The COVID-19 pandemic is important for mortgages because after it finished, there are changes to the landing criteria, people who try to borrow money for a mortgage on furlough, and mortgage holidays that all influenced the process. For example, people who applied for a mortgage and were on the furlough scheme found that it was much more difficult to get an application, because that wasn’t enough of a financial reassurance to the lender that you could keep up with payments.
Mortgages typically take a while to be sorted out, because there’s a lot of information that needs to be processed and confirmed.
Providers have to make sure you’re telling the truth about things like your address, your financial commitments, your income, and a lot of other factors. It’s a big responsibility, so it’s important for providers to be absolutely certain that you can achieve the mortgage.
After all of these checks have been done, the provider then has to carry out a valuation survey of the property you want to buy to make sure that the amount you need matches up with the value of the property. There are lots of cases where a property is worth more than the amount you want to borrow, so you need to discuss a larger mortgage.
Something you can do to make the process easier to speak to a mortgage broker, because they already have familiarity with them and what’s on offer. If you do it this way, then you don’t have to speak to a mortgage provider yourself, and you don’t have to do your own research.
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