I’ve seen a few threads on this topic, but was surprised to see no official documentation, which is making me nervous about how to navigate buying a house using my Monzo bank account.
I believe most payments like this are arranged by CHAPs, which isn’t documented at all by Monzo. Neither is anything to do with increasing payment limits.
Now that the chat function has been removed from the app, I’m nervous about how I will get the support I need to make a large payment. My money is all in Monzo, so I would have the same problem to transfer it to a conventional bank.
Is there an official procedure for this kind of transaction? What are the steps I will need to take?
Last week I deposited a large sum into my solicitors account as part of a house purchase. I contacted Monzo via the online chat feature requesting my limits to be increased, within 30mins of me asking, it was done. I transferred the money, following day we exchanged contracts.
Buying a house with Monzo would make a great topic for a blog post.
I expect to be in a position to buy a house within the next year or two and at the moment have no intention to use Monzo for the transaction, due to lack of confidence in Monzo’s customer service processes.
I must admit, I was a little anxious about it but I’m “full monzo” and did the whole house buying process with no issues. I needed a statement to prove my savings, customer service sorted me out no problem, and as I mentioned above, transferring my deposit was simple too.
I asked about this on Monzo chat the other day as we’re in the middle of buying too. They said you can message the day before and ask for the limits to the upped for the following day
My worry with this would be relying on Monzo to do this is a timely manner. As in the example above and with my own experiences, what if they don’t even look at it until it’s too late?
When doing a house purchase you normally get a number of days to do the transfers as all the money goes to your solicitor along with mortgage funds who then pays the seller.
Admittedly, this was my concern… however, my limits were increased within 30mins of me requesting it. Maybe I was lucky to get the quick turnaround, but it all went smoothly for me.
I’m not too far away from buying my own home (hopefully) and I definitely won’t be using Monzo for the deposit. There have been far too many issues with people not getting their limits raised in time it’s just not worth the risk.
A number of days can also be weeks too, so I’m unsure why so many are concerned?
The solicitor collects all the funds from you, your mortgage provider etc well in advance and it’s them that transfer the funds on day of exchange. So all you need to do is concentrate on getting out of your house in the allotted timeframe.
Just to add to the above, you don’t set a date to move until everything is in place either as there are so many things that can cause delays, it’s almost inevitable with the amount of people involved.
For me it was the Help to Buy scheme sending through a document that had a typo in my address. This added a few days before it was resolved and resent.
When we bought our first house transferring of the deposit and the costs to the solicitor were sent over as one payment way in advance of our actual completion date. Its the solictor who initiates and co-ordinates everything for completion day.
Of course do make sure you double check who you’re sending money to before transferring such a large amount (read lots of articles about customers of many different banks being scammed after receiving what they thought was an instruction from their solicitor to pay their deposit and fees and actually it was a fraudster). If you get an email from your solicitor asking to pay, back it up with a phone call beforehand to verify its legitimate.
Not dismissing some of points raised, its right to expect our bank can make a payment for such an important reason but also want to reassure people (and hopefully ease some of the stress of moving house) that actually you can plan in advance.
