Your sanity may be at risk if you apply for a mortgage

You’d think it would be simple. We wanted a mortgage; Santander wanted mortgage customers. A relationship made in heaven, surely?

Perhaps it would have been simpler if we could have formed a relationship with them directly. But mortgage underwriters, it seems, are stunted, scaly creatures, incapable of speech, who emerge from their holes only to defecate on the mortgage applications of the unwary. We had to hire a specialist translator, a mortgage advisor who looked like a wombat in the only photo I could find when I cyberstalked him. He was upbeat, hugely optimistic about our chances. 

And why not? Apply Santander’s standard multiple to our incomes and, according to the wombat, we could borrow enough to build a supertanker and put our house inside it. But you are already one step ahead; you can hear the tense music that would start playing at this point if this were an ITV drama. For, it seems, part way through our application process, Santander decided to Crack Down On Self Employed Applicants.

The wombat assured us this was not a problem. Remove my self employed income, and Helen’s payslips alone would allow us to buy a castle, employ a gang to dismantle the house we were buying and re-erect it in the castle’s great hall. But Santander had other ideas.

Santander underwriters say goodbye to another hopeful mortgage applicant

I’ll pause to allow the ITV incidental music to swell threateningly, before we go to an ad break.

Welcome back. Anyway, an eagle eyed underwriter noted with interest that the house we were buying was three hours from Helen’s place of work, and was she really going to carry on working? 

The wombat stepped in, playing hardball. The conversation I imagine (translating the guttural grunts of the underwriters) went something like:

“Yes she’s leaving her job, but here’s a contract she’s got for two year’s work with an education company”

“Me no think contract compliant. This contract sneaky dirty self employed contract.”

“Well yes, but it’s two years’ firm work and proof of income.”

“You no get cheeky with us wombat; Rules say previous two years’ self employed accounts needed.”

“Well, obviously she can’t provide that because she’s currently on PAYE.”

“Then you dead in water. Stupid wombat.”

We were well beyond low level panic at this point. But the wombat assured us all would be well. If we just used my self employed income, I had two years’ accounts ready to show. If they took the average of the two, according to the wombat, we could borrow enough to buy Lundy Island and employ a Puffin Wrangler to muster the compliant birds into building us a house of local stone.

Back he went into the arena, the incidental music swelling.

“Hur hur hur, wombat back for more”

“Wait a minute, look at these two years’ accounts. If you take the average-

“We no take average. We take lowest of two incomes.”

“Oh, OK. Well I think we can just about do it if we-“

“Wait. We no take income, we take profit figure.”

“Why?”

“That lower than income figure”

“But surely-“

“And rules say we lower that by five percent.”

“   “

“Hur hur, wombat cry baby.”

And that was the end. But the wombat was undeterred, and told us that he would go to HSBC instead, who would happily lend us enough to build an underground lair with rocket launcher and underfloor heating. Not only that, we’d have a decision within two days. 

"I've got just the mortgage for you, squire..."

Three days later, we tried to ring the wombat. He wasn’t returning our calls. The incidental music began swelling again. I posed as a broker and rang HSBC, ascertaining only that our application was “in the system”. Our voicemail messages to the wombat escalated to proposing ingenious forms of torture should he continue to avoid us.

Then out of the blue, HSBC arranged a valuation of our prospective property. Apart from giving the estate agent a heart attack (how many mortgages could one couple need?) it suggested that they were positively inclined towards us. The valuation came and went. The wombat still didn’t return our calls. Then, finally, four weeks after Santander first started raising objections, HSBC delivered the goods. 

We had our mortgage.

We could start worrying about everything else instead.