How long does it take to get a mortgage approval?

How do I know if my mortgage will be approved?

I was chatting to a lovely lady last night and she’s worked in her job for a number of years. She’s been with the same bank for a long time and has a good salary. She’s got a 15% deposit, all from savings. With that particular client, I don’t have any concerns about the mortgage going through.

She’s got a couple of credit cards with very low balances. She’s never missed any payments or been late to pay on anything. I’m sure that the mortgage will be approved very quickly.

I wouldn’t do a Mortgage in Principle for that client until she’s found somewhere, because I’m very confident that once she finds a property, I could probably have a Decision in Principle arranged within 15 minutes. When I said 15 minutes, she was joking that wanted the same turnaround as her sister – because I had got hers done in 10.

I’ll then collect all the pay slips, bank statements, etc to be ready to submit that application once that client has a property in mind.

How long after mortgage approval to completion?

Again, that’s a difficult one to gauge – it all depends on what you’re buying and who from.

Let’s say you were buying a house from me today as a First Time Buyer. I’m selling my property, and I’m not moving into a new house. I’m going to rent and I have that already sorted. That could go through in six to eight weeks without too many problems.

However, if I instead needed to find a house to buy, it might take me three or four weeks. And then, it depends on what the people selling that property are doing. I’ve had chains that have gone through in four or five weeks but it can be much longer.

The longest one I can think of is a client buying from his grandad at the moment. I arranged his mortgage in December 2023. We’ve had some legal issues with the land and we’re at February 2025 and we’re still not a lot further on.

That’s a very extreme situation, by the way. An average completion from start to finish is 17 weeks.
It’s not a particularly quick job, because you’ve got so many parties and solicitors involved.

What happens if my mortgage is declined? What causes a mortgage to be declined?

There are various things. Bad credit is one reason. If you’ve got late payments or county court judgements that can have an impact, especially if they are recent.

I had a client who told me their salary was a lot more than it actually was. When I got their pay slips I could see he was on quite a low basic salary, but did a lot of overtime, extra hours and additional duties. Some of these duties were acting up, rather than permanent. He’d assumed that was his gross salary, but we couldn’t use this income in the application because some work was only temporary.

Sometimes properties get declined, rather than the applicant. One of my clients is buying a property that’s had some structural movement. The lender initially declined it but now the vendor is doing the appropriate repairs under warranty and guarantee. Once that’s been done, the lender will re-offer it.

So various different things can cause a mortgage to be declined. We would work together to establish the reason and whether another lender would lend on it. As an example, every lender has a different way of working out overtime, bonuses or commission. One will accept the last three months and take an average, some will want 12 months, some will want the lowest of the last three months.

If your overtime is £200 one month, £500 the next and then £500 again, some would take the £200. Some would take an average, giving you £400. It’s all slightly different and we would establish which lender to go to.

I should say that I have very few mortgages declined. If I can’t do it, there’s normally a reason, and I wouldn’t take that business on. Not many that come through with a decline I wasn’t expecting. From my perspective, there’s no point in spending a client’s time and money if it’s not going to be accepted.

You’ve demonstrated there how a mortgage broker can help. Is there anything else you’d like to add?

If you’ve got a good mortgage advisor, they will walk you through the process of submitting a mortgage and get it approved as quickly as possible. You will want any guesswork to be put to bed fast, and the quicker your mortgage has been approved, the better.

It’s terrible if five weeks later, the lender’s still asking for additional documents because you didn’t upload them in the first place. We get it done as simply and effectively as possible.

YOUR HOME MAY BE REPOSSESSED IF YOU DO NOT KEEP UP WITH YOUR MORTGAGE REPAYMENTS.