mortage applied for and now stuck in the system

hi all hoping someone can help me relax about this a bit - or point me in the right direction! Our estate agent has been helping us apply for a mortage and after many months of getting varous bits of paperwork together, valuations done and choosing the right property etc etc the bank eventually have said yes. They said yes in the first week of the year and then nothing....4 weeks ago they then said it would be another 2 weeks.....still nothing! Our estate agent says she has been chasing and getting nowhere. so since they eventually said yes it has been 7 weeks - is this normal or is this something i should be worrying about?

It does seem a bit odd although a couple of agent friends of mine were telling me recently that banks were taking ages to get mortgages approved and arranged.

Have  they given you any sort of reason for the delay?

Justin

Hi thanks for the reply, no there has been no reason given at all, our estate agent has been chasing and getting nowhere! What would the standard turn around time be after they approve it? Can't believe it is taking so long, we have our flights booked for April and were hoping to be going to our own house!!

 i think that's just the way things work in spain. We were approved for a morgage back in September and they approved it in principal very quickly, but took another 4 months to actually go through. 

we kept hearing back from the agent saying he had spoken to them and they promised to have it ready by the weekend etc, but would never keep to the deadlines. it got to the point when we thought they had rejected us but didn't want to tell us so were just ignoring us. Then suddenly one day they contacted us with a closing date for about 3 days time.

I just think they are incredibly laid back in terms of getting things done and unfortunately every little decision now needs approval from very senior people at the bank so this adds a lot of time.

thank you for taking the time to reply, that has helped. We have been thinking they must have changed their mind aswell, its such a wait we have been getting very stressed about it! We are still waiting, our flights are booked to go out in April so maybe we will get it sorted before then, if not we will go back again in September so hopefully by then.......we will see!!! Thanks again!!!