Owning your own home

Hey mate it's exactly what princeperch said. Your solicitor doesn't sound like she knows what she's doing/can't be bothered. She should draft a rider to the contract stating that the 4.5% of purchase price will be retained from the vendor upon completion for improvement works or something like that. The original agreed purchase price remains the same for contract and for mortgage purposes. There is no need to get another mortgage offer. You need to tell her to get her act together. I can't find my docs here as the files are in boxes but it really isn't that difficult. She arranged it for me a week before we were due to exchange. That was alongside arranging a new mortgage and remortgage to complete simultaneously.