Advice for move from 1st to 2nd house

starlorna22

I'm looking for a bit of advice about the best way to make the move from our first house which we bought just over a year ago to one in a better area.
When we bought this house we thought we would be staying here longer than a year, but the area seems to be going downhill quickly and we are inbetween 2 pretty rough areas, so my partner and I have decided that now is the time to move.
We bought our house for 105k and have a surveyor coming to re-value it tomorrow. I'm hoping it will now be worth about 115k, as we have an unsecured loan that we took out with the mortgage for 8k giving us a total of 113k. If the house isn't worth more than that then we'll be a bit stuck . . .
Also dependant on any profit made we may or may not have a deposit. When we bought this house it wasn't too much of a problem, but now we are looking at spending quite a bit more so think they may require a deposit in order to lend us that amount.
We were thinking of moving into cheap rented accomodation for 6/12 months in order to save a deposit as we could save around 12k in a year if we really put our minds to it and tightened our belts. Also my partner has got a 6 month old car which could be sold if needs be and would be worth about 11k.
I'm just looking for advice about the best way to handle this, sell the car and have a small deposit, live in rented for a year and save a bigger deposit. We're really unsure what to do. Also - if we see our perfect house and then ours won't sell what happens then?
Sorry to ramble so much, but any advice would be gratefully recieved.
Starlorna x

UK007BullDog

starlorna,

First you need to look at your mortgage documents and look if you have any early redemption fees to pay if you repaid your mortgage after one year.

The only way for you not to have any redemption fees would be for you to have chosen a completely flexible mortgage.

It sounds like you chose a Northern Rock mortgage as they lend a mortgage and a secured loan.

Once you know if you have to pay ane early exit fees and how much you might find that any gain in the value of the property would be eaten up by the fees.

So depending on how long you fixed the mortgage you might just have to grin and bear it for another year or two, depending on your mortgage deal.

You can also ask the company which sold you the mortgage to tell you of the costs.

You might also ask if you can "Port" the mortgage over to a new property, once the old property is sold but the exchange of both properties needs to be nearly simultaneous, I think they give you just 30 to 50 days in the exchanges from the sold property to the new one.

Ask your mortgage broker to find out for you or ask the lender directly.

Another tip: when speaking with the lender directly do not mention why you want to move and dont say the area is turning bad. No need to let them know stuff like that and if they do ask then just say you want to live closer to relatives, dont say job change either. :rotfl:

Good luck!

starlorna22

It is with Northern Rock, and I'm sure we do have early redemption fees, I'm going to dig the documents out of the loft in a minute, and see how much it is.