My partner and I went sale agreed on a property almost 5 months ago. The property was advertised as being exempt from stamp duty. We were given assurances about this from the estate agent and the vendor (in person). It took months of trying to sort our mortgage through a supposedly reputable broker which turned out to be a complete nightmare. An organisation who need to take a course in customer service. The vendor also took forever getting various certifications in place. We were very patient and never once demanded that he hurry things along despite two interest rate rises coming into effect during this period. As soon as he got things sorted on his end we started getting calls from his estate agent demanding the contracts get signed asap. We wanted to make sure we drew down at the start of the month so we didnt have to make our first payment until the following month.
We originally agreed to sign on the wednesday. However, my girlfriend had to go back home (abroad) to get tests done on the previous week. She had to go home because there was a 12 month waiting list here. She was only supposed to stay 2 days but the doctors made her stay a week to get further tests done for possible cancer.
We only got our mortgage approval through at the very last minute - by email to our solicitor direct form the broker. I have lost track of the number of times I have been requested to submit additional paperwork. On each occassion I specifically requested that the broker makes sure that this is not repeated by asking the lender to request all the documentation they needed in one go. As anyone will know trying to organising this is hard enough when you are trying to work during the day never mind having to do it in drips and drabs. Our broker, despite knowing that we were so close to signing, showed no interest in pushing this through. In fact only I rang a few days prior to the signing I wouldnt have known that the lender reguired EVEN MORE documentation. Then to make matters worse they stopped returning my calls.
You can imagine the stress we were under. We went to sign contracts last Thursday. In the middle of signing we recieved a phone call from the estate agent demanding that we sign the contracts immediately. Then we discover that the broker/lender couldnt even get our details right with the mortgage we were applying for. None of the 11 queries raised by our solicitor had been addressed by the vendors solicitor and the icing on the cake - THE PROPERTY WAS NOT STAMP DUTY EXEMPT. This meant we would have to find 30,000 from somewhere.
Not to drag this out even longer but the vendor didnt bother replacing the roof which was necessary for a floor area compliance cert to be issued and therefore make the property SD exempt. The bleedin estate agent didnt even know what a floor area compliance certificate was!
At this stage we were as low as you could possibly imagine. We had paid for a structural survey and snag list, 2 valuations, spent weekends sourcing furniture and suppliers etc. Five months have been wasted.
This has been a truly soul destroying process that I wouldnt wish on anyone. I have certainly learned a number of things about Ireland's property boom. 1. Estate agents dont have a clue about what they are selling - about 1/10 are able to answer 1/10 questions you ask during a showing. 2. There is no transparency in mortgage brokers services. 3. You need to be just as cold and ruthless as the people involved in selling.
I am not trying to put people off and I hope that we are an exception but this was so out of order. Is it legal to falsely adervtise?
We just totally distraught...