Is it a good time to get a mortgage?!

luce181

Myself and my oh currently rent paying £550 a month, we have talked about buying a house for a while but we know very little about mortgages

I know house prices are quite low at the moment so is it a good time to buy?

Our combined income is around £32000, I have no idea what that that would get for a mortgage, my credit score is iffy as I've had late payments on CC's in the past but no defaults for a few years. My oh has good v good credit history.

Any info would be much appreciated

_Andy_

OK first things first, how much deposit do you have saved up?

LeeSouthEast

Most estimates seem to be another drop expected in 2010, so if I were wishing to buy a house, I'd wait a tad longer.

herbiesjp

WHat prices are you looking at also?

Do you have an up to date copy of your credit file?

koexelek

_Andy_ wrote: »

OK first things first, how much deposit do you have saved up?

That's the key

dunstonh

Is it a good time to get a mortgage?!

No. Its just about the worst time in the last 15 years. Less choice and strcter lending criteria make it bad. Indeed, I did mortgages during the last recession and it seems worse this time.

I know house prices are quite low at the moment so is it a good time to buy?

This is a different question to the thread title. The answer it that only time will tell. You also need to realise that financial crisis tend to happen on average every 7 years. There have been 8 since 1956. The gap in recessions and house prices drops has just been longer this time round. If you take a 25 year mortgages, chances are you will see at least two house price crashes and 3 recessions in that period.

We are only around 18-24 months into this one. The 90s house price drop dragged on for around 6 years. There were a number of periods where house prices went up for a few months only to fall back again later.

The scale of the drop so far has been lower than expected and the income to borrowing ratios still look too high to suggest any decent recovery. Both the last house price crash and this one had similar peak figures before they started dropping. That suggests that either more is to come or there will be little or no growth for many years and it will take inflation to push house prices up. Problem with that is we are currently in deflation which would bring prices down. Although there is a strong risk that inflation could swing back in and that could allow prices to rice.

Basically, there are many scenarios that could occur and no-one knows if it will be best to buy now, in 1 year, two years or whatever.

luce181

Hmm, having read this and some other posts I think we should save for a bigger deposit at the moment we'd be struggling to get 10% together
I think that's prob the best idea as we don't really want to jump in when we don't know what's gonna happen in the next few years.

I guess as we are happy where we are we shouldn't rock the boat! Thanks for your help