Looking for advice FTB (want on ladder so badly)

Britwife

So, I've seen some post about the Homebuy scheme and wonder if that would be our way to getting a house.

My husband earns 22,500 and hopefully due for a raise later in the year. I stay home with our 3 children. We currently have no debt.

1 default on our credit that isn't my husbands and no proof that it is his. He got a letter sometime in 2007 and he told them to prove that it was his because it didn't sound familiar and he cleared his debt when he left the country back in Feb 2003. He was told that payments were made up to early 2004. We pulled his credit reports recently and found that it is on one of them and due to fall off April 2010. Obviously, we have to wait for this to fall off to apply for a mortgage and will send a statute barred letter to the company since it will be 6 years and also, they never proved it was his and no contact since late 2007ish.

We really only have a grand in savings and no credit cards. We do have 2 current accounts and a savings account and 2 mobiles that are all in the green on our reports. Our bills and rent are paid on time. Would no credit cards hold us back or should we apply for a small amount credit card after the default falls off? We really don't want to do this because we had learned the hard way in the states. We are older and wiser now.

We did own a home in the states 3 years ago and don't know if we would qualify as FTB's here. I'm tired of paying my LL's mortgage.

Now this FTB program, how exactly does it work?

If approved, would I still need a down payment? Or would the scheme act as our down payment since it would get us into the allowed mortgage range for my husband's salary? Also, it mentioned fees after 5 years, does anyone know how much they are? Are they paid monthly or yearly? We're looking at houses in the 120 range which would put us at a 70 grand mortgage. Are there any FTB special interest rates or what is the average rate for a FTB?

I'm sorry for rambling, this is very confusing and a bit different to how things are done in the states. How does our situation look to you all? Do we stand a chance or will we have to continue renting?

Thanks in advanced

Jon_Tiffany

With 3 children I would think long and hard before taking on a mortgage. There are some online calculators you can use to get an idea of what sort of repayments you would be looking at - how does it compare with your rent payments?

Some builders are running schemes to help out FTBs, from what you have said I think you would be a FTB. In fact I doubt the builders are that bothered so long as they sell a house. I'm not sure how these schemes compare with just getting a normal mortgage. Your lack of a deposit will make it difficult to get a mortgage on a good rate.

Ditto

Here is a calculator http://http://www.fool.co.uk/mortgages/mortgage-calculator/borrow-calculator.aspx

You need a decent deposit, at least 10%.

Britwife

We're working on saving more and this isn't something that will happen in the next 6 months anyway but was hoping this scheme would be a big boost to help us.

Thanks Ditto for the calculator. It comes up with a range of 54 to 76 thousand. The calculator shows if we come up with 7 thousand, we may get the lower end but not the higher.

We pay 550 a month here and a mortgage is something we don't take lightly. As I said, we worked hard years ago to get out of debt and have been debt free since.

I used a few repayment calculators and the max loan at say 75000 would be less than what we pay in rent. HSBC calculator said we could borrow 17000.

We'll just take it step by step and see what happens in the near future and re-evaluate then. Need to do more reading anyway as I don't know if the scheme is for new homes only and if they are, would be out of our price range.

Thanks so much for your advice and input.