A couple who spent £4,000 on fees when buying a £519,995 family home say they were left in a “blind panic” after their mortgage was pulled just days before exchange.
Dominic and Adele Watts thought everything was on track to move into their four-bedroom detached home ahead of welcoming their second child.
Instead, the deal collapsed at the last minute, leaving the couple, from South Oxfordshire, facing spiralling costs and the risk of losing their dream home altogether.
“We’d already had a decision in principle and were quite far down the line,” Dominic, a recruitment manager, said.
“We’d instructed solicitors, done the surveys, and paid all the upfront costs. The offer was pulled just days before things were due to move towards exchange, so it felt very last minute.”
By that point, they had already spent around £4,000 on fees, including surveys, legal costs and a £700 valuation.
The mortgage, with Precise Mortgages, was rejected automatically after a small piece of adverse credit appeared on Dominic’s file.
“It wasn’t anything major,” he said. “A standing order I’d cancelled bounced unexpectedly. But there was no human review, it was just an automated rejection.”
Dominic’s card details were stolen, causing him to miss a payment for his car. Although Barclays refunded the £350, it showed up in the credit report.
The timing could hardly have been worse as Adele was heavily pregnant, and the couple were preparing for the arrival of their baby within weeks.
“It was pretty overwhelming,” he said. “I didn’t want my wife worrying about it when she was pregnant, so I tried to take it all on myself. But it was stressful.
“We’d already invested so much financially and emotionally, and for a while it felt like we might lose the house altogether.”
Their fallback option offered little reassurance. A specialist lender proposed a mortgage at 6.8 per cent, with monthly repayments jumping from around £1,100 on their existing deal to roughly £2,700.
“It just wasn’t realistic for us,” he said. “We were about to bring another baby into the world. The last thing we needed was that level of financial pressure.”
Running out of time, Dominic sought a second opinion through mortgage broker Tembo, and the outcome was dramatically different.
“An agent looked at our case within about 10 to 15 minutes and immediately reassured me that the issue wasn’t a big deal,” he said. “Within 48 hours, we had a new decision in principle.”
A new lender, Accord offered a deal at around 4.5 to 4.6 per cent, bringing monthly repayments to just under £2,100 with a fee of £995.
“That’s about £600 a month saved, roughly £7,500 a year,” he said. “But more than that, it gave us breathing room.”
Even then, the couple were racing against the clock as the original exchange deadline had already slipped, and they had to negotiate an extension to keep the purchase alive.
They are now set to complete in June, shortly after their baby arrives.
“It’s still going to be hectic,” he said. “But at least now it’s happening. For a while, it felt like it might all fall apart.”
For Dominic, the stakes were about more than just finances. The property overlooks a protected former Second World War airbase and is close to both sides of the family.
“It’s the kind of place you picture raising a family,” he said. “That’s why it hit so hard when it looked like we might lose it over something so minor.”
Looking back, he believes lenders rely too heavily on automated systems.
“In our case, it felt like a very minor issue triggered a blanket rejection, with no opportunity to explain it,” he said. “There needs to be more human judgement in the process.”
His advice to other buyers is to not rely on a single opinion “even if it comes recommended”.
He added: “Shop around and compare options. Question decisions that don’t feel right.”