Unconditional Approval time and FHB nerves

Hi,

Found an apartment i'm highly interested (Sydney) in and if the inspection (Wednesday) goes well would like to place an offer this week. At this stage, i've received a pre-approval from St George which is about 25,000 in excess of the purchase price i'm looking at for this apartment (pre-approved up to 800k purchase). Had a verbal confirmation of pre-approval from the lending manager on Friday who said their IT system was having some trouble so he'd try email/mail it out as soon as possible... Some questions i have are:

1. The Bank's lending manager mentioned that there's buildings on certain streets they may not lend against. I know this is one of the streets he mentioned (its a long street which cuts across a few suburbs...), so will query him if this is one of those buildings. Curious if it would be prudent to start talking to another bank on Tuesday as a fail sale? In case this area is one where the bank has a large exposure/wouldnt lend?

2. Am a first home buyer so not really sure how long the process takes in terms of going from conditional to unconditional approval, particularly in this environment (covid, hot market). Any views on St George or just times in general would be useful for knowing what to expect. Was an earlier thread where someone mentioned four weeks with St George??

Do people generally let their buy/sell contracts go passed the cooling off period while waiting for unconditional approval? Just want everything to go smoothly on this purchase (if its the right one for me) and avoid unnecessary stress with delays on contracts/receiving finance. I understand subject to finance would not be attractive to a vendor and expect this unit would get a good amount of interest..

Other info that may be useful in terms of complexity of the loan – Property is in sydney's eastern suburbs, full time worker. Have 170k for stamp duty + deposit on a purchase price of 775k...(Looking at a loan around 650k, so close to 80% LVR, might need to add a few k.) Income is 114k although have a 5k credit card and maybe one more year of HECS repayments.

Thanks

 

As a mortgage broker, one of several reasons I'm not sending business to St George is their terrible service.

There are plenty of lenders that offer more competitive loans and can approve it within a few days.

 

You can ask for the cooling off period to be extended briefly - pretty common to take a bit longer to get formal finance approval these days. Did you get the approval through a broker?

 

Pre-approval directly with St George. The lending manager also just passed on that he may need confirmation of prior employment (lived overseas and moved back recently so less than 6 months in current role but no employment gaps), and then he'd check with a credit team as there may be LMI (which i think would be waived anyway but presumably St George covers that under the first home loan deposit scheme).

He thinks 5 days for formal approval and advised caution for putting in an offer prior to him doing that check with the credit team.

 

Employment history is either a non issue, or the pre-approval was not properly assessed. If employment history is going to be a problem, the pre-approval would ask more questions about it. I'd also expect that a lending manager would have enough knowledge of their own policies to address this.

Also the Westpac group (including St George) are not participating in the first home buyer low deposit scheme. They have an LMI waiver for loans up to 85% but otherwise you need to be a doctor or accountant.

 

Thanks, guess i confused the two offers.

 

St George generally only gives a computer preapproval. Is the credit guy going to fully assess your application, or just have a look at it and give you an idea of whether it is good to go? If you can't get anything formal from them I'd be going somewhere else asap.
I only use the dragon unless my clients insist. They are so painful. And not particularly generous with borrowing so if you are not far off your maximum, there might be better options out there.

 

He mentioned a credit team would look at it. I'm going to go chat to another bank in person i think as a fail safe, want to be confident i can make an offer. On paper i think the only issue is that i've been in my role <6 months? But otherwise same industry and prior job was 5 years.

Would be 80% LVR and less than 6x Debt to income (5.9ish)

 

You should've used a Mortgage Broker instead of going direct.
With the information you've provided there are plenty of options out there.

 

Hi there,

Please check my post: St George Unconditional Approval so slow?

I was preapproved for 1.6M, it was not close to that figure at all, and STG teams kept trying to attack me in every shape and form. But to their defence

I had a stable income, an ABN, and other loans paid off them with an OFFSET account.

The process to mega slow, i suggest to go to a mid-tier back if you are a first home buyer.

 

5 days was never true for me. Valuation step took 10 days business to complete. 11th was meant to be Formal approval.

 

Did the bank explain why it took 10 days to get a valuation when they're usually completed in 3? Was it due to access issues due to Covid restrictions?

I just had a clients purchase approved with St George in 4 business days (ordered val upfront prior to submission)
LVR was 85%
Owner Occupied purchase

At the beginning of the year their turnaround times were so bad this would've taken them 4 weeks.

 

How did you go @Luckyg94 ? Any offers made or do they only want to accept with a 66w?
I hope you had good luck

 

Lindsay is right, 10 days is a little extreme, unless it was access issues.

 

nope 10 days, my friend bought a place similar value with STG, took 12 days.
However, his one got formally approved on the 15th day.

Same timeline as me, besides the fact mine got reset

 

No they didnt, they said they were going to call the agency on the 8th day, only heard back from the banks on the 10th day.
LVR 68%.
OO purchased as well.

 

You have to understand, it's not the banks that's doing the valuation, it's the valuation company which the bank has no direct contact with to get them to hurry up.

 

Yeah i was not arguing with their process or company. I was pointing out you were saying its 'little extreme' when i know three people going through the same thing, including different banks.

However, i do acknowledge there is luck to the draw which creditor you get.

 

Are they all going direct to the bank? Maybe that's the difference?
I'm a broker and just had one Formally approved by St George in 4 business days. I order the valuations BEFORE submitting any application for finance, and if there are any hold ups I can contact the valuation firm directly to find out what's going on and update my client. 3 business days is standard for full valuations to be completed, if just a desktop/AVM then they are much quicker than that.

You story sounds familiar with many people I've spoken to who go direct to bank. The issue is no one at the bank is accountable and what probably happened is the valuation wasn't ordered for some time, they may have told you it was.
But you can't compare one bank's processing time with another, they all have different service levels so you need to compare apples with apples.
There is no 'luck' to it at all