Stuck in a 1 bedroom flat - is there anything we can do?

Essexgirl81

pinkshoes wrote: »

Fixed until Nov 2009, 1 bed flat, and 15 month old daughter. I presume the child wasn't planned???

Just out of curiousity - you had a £5k debt and paid £5k deposit on your house, so how come you didn't hold off buying and pay the debt off first?

Hi Pinkshoes,

My daughter was planned - although it took us well over a year to get pregnant. I thought that i'd never be able to have a baby but here she is!!!

Basically, nothing else has gone as planned really. I had a good job in a pharmaceutical company and was paying off my debts steadily. The £5K deposit was my husband's money and when we moved into the flat we weren't married. I'm afraid that my husband refused to get married until we had a mortgage and I made a mistake and plumped for this flat because I wanted to be with him.

Likewise, he didn't want to have any children either until we weren't renting anymore. I knew that this would happen in the end but he wouldn't listen to me and was getting bad advice from his family. What a mess eh? He knows better now of course and has apologised for 'sitting on his laurels' when I got pregnant. Bless :heart2:

Anyway, I posted my message just to see if I could get some inspiration and good advice so at the very least I can take a deep breath and plough on through until things get better - which i'm sure they will eventually.
Thankyou everyone for your posts. Very much appreciated!! :T xx

Xaviera

Have you tried contacting your local authority?

edgex

If youd put the flat on in Jan 2008 for what you had paid for it, it might have sold.

As other posters have said, you need to find out if you can claim any tax-credits & other support.

When does your fixed term end, with the early repayment charge?
Now that you have cleared other debts, & have presumably been keeping up with mortgage payments, it could be worth finding out if you can re-mortgage with a mainstream lender, to try & reduce the monthly payments, or start getting the capital paid off.

Essexgirl81

Xaviera wrote: »

Have you tried contacting your local authority?

We've been on the local council list since August 2007 but although they said that we need a 2 bedroom property they are not allowed to offer us anything whilst we own the flat which is fair enough isn't it??

We have asked about shared ownership but again you have to be nominated by the council and we're not eligible for that at the moment.

We just have to grit our teeth and get on with it now I think. The sensible thing would be to stay and ride it out and just put the whole thing down to 'experience'!! :rolleyes:

BTW, I have been trying to get an evening job but there's not much around here at the moment unless you work in one of the factories night-shift from 11pm-7am. My husband needs to leave for work at 7am so I couldn't get back with the car in time. I asked the agency if I could do slightly different hours but they said it wasn't negotiable. Apparently 95% of the staff were from 'Eastern Europe' and didn't have a problem with the hours. Nuff said!!

LittleMissAspie

£1000 a month wages for a male in a London suburb seems very low. Has your husband no way of moving up in his job?

If you sold for 100k and rented for 550pcm, you'd owe 8k and would save £350 a month. That would take you some 2 years to pay off and you'd still be struggling and in a 1-bed. So you may as well stay where you are. Do you think you could get a better mortgage rate in November?

robin_banks

It is fair enough, there are people in a far worse predicament than yourselves.

You'd be even worse off under shared ownership, it's a con and be thankful you're not eligible for this scheme.

Essexgirl81

edgex wrote: »

If youd put the flat on in Jan 2008 for what you had paid for it, it might have sold.

As other posters have said, you need to find out if you can claim any tax-credits & other support.

When does your fixed term end, with the early repayment charge?
Now that you have cleared other debts, & have presumably been keeping up with mortgage payments, it could be worth finding out if you can re-mortgage with a mainstream lender, to try & reduce the monthly payments, or start getting the capital paid off.

It's very frustrating because the flat has been on since this time last year but no-one has been interested. If we could remortgage in November with a more mainstream lender I would hope that we could at least reduce the monthly repayments but I don't know where we would stand with how much they would be prepared to lend us now on the basis of my husband's income alone. We got our current mortgage jointly in 2005.

Also, if you are deemed to be in negative equity - does that affect a re-mortgage? Sorry if that's a really stupid question!!!

Ooh, yes - I should say that we currently get £39 a month in Child Tax Credit but we're not entitled to anything more......believe me, i've asked!! We're also not currently entitled to any other benefits. My husband earns roughly £23,500 basic p.a.

sarah_elton

Essexgirl81 wrote: »

Also, if you are deemed to be in negative equity - does that affect a re-mortgage? Sorry if that's a really stupid question!!!

Unfortunately, yes. They'll look at the percentage of the home's value you want to borrow, just as if you were buying it. The valuation survey will decide what the bank thinks the property is worth.

If you're in negative equity, you're applying for a 105% or 110% mortgage. I'm afraid they don't seem to exist anymore. Most lenders want at least a 10% deposit. So, if, for instance, the valuation survey came out at £100k (they seem to come in really low at the moment), you'd be lent up to about £90k and have to put in the rest yourself to pay off your existing mortgage.

Ask on the mortgages board for more advice, as there may be mortgages out there that go higher than 90% LTV.

I'm in the same boat - my fixed rate ends Jan 23rd, and if I wasn't selling, I couldn't apply for a new mortgage deal as I'm in negative equity, so at that point I'm moving onto HSBC's standard variable rate.

Essexgirl81

LittleMissAspie wrote: »

£1000 a month wages for a male in a London suburb seems very low. Has your husband no way of moving up in his job?

If you sold for 100k and rented for 550pcm, you'd owe 8k and would save £350 a month. That would take you some 2 years to pay off and you'd still be struggling and in a 1-bed. So you may as well stay where you are. Do you think you could get a better mortgage rate in November?

The company my husband works for is in Romford (we live about 25 miles away in Braintree) and when they had a salary review of the whole company they said that their workers got a good average wage for the immediate area - that being Harold Hill!!! The nearby companies that they made comparisons with were: Tesco, B & Q and a BMW dealership. My husband deffo does not get 'London Allowance' and there are little or no fringe benefits.

Trouble is......where can you find work as a Scientist (Chemistry) in the South-East that isn't contract work? Two of his friends have recently been made redundant from their jobs and they worked in the same sector for much larger companies.

Sad thing is.....hubby is already a Junior Manager.....and is on that salary.

pinkshoes

Essexgirl81 wrote: »

Trouble is......where can you find work as a Scientist (Chemistry) in the South-East that isn't contract work? Two of his friends have recently been made redundant from their jobs and they worked in the same sector for much larger companies.

Sad thing is.....hubby is already a Junior Manager.....and is on that salary.

I know of chemists (degree level) who work as material scientists for a company in Oxfordshire, although that's a bit far out for you. They pay around the £25k mark.

In fact, many large companies have materials scientists, who often have a chemistry background.