First time buyers (hopefully!) - mortgage help!

karukai

Ok, me and my wife have been renting our current house since November at £450 a month. We desperately want to get on the property ladder so that our money isn't just being thrown away every month.
We've had a look at a few houses online, and it seems the only ones we like are at least £110k+.
At the moment my wife is on about £12300 and I'm on about £13500. However, she doesn't turn 18 until May (I'm guessing this would be an issue).

We dont have any ridiculously bad debts, maybe £2000 in total.

And we might be able to scrape together or borrow from relatives a couple of grand as a deposit.

We know that lenders usually go on 3.5 or 4 times (sorry if that's not accurate!) your income but since we can afford £450 rent a month, is there a way round this or anything?

Basically, what are our chances?

Any advice or help would be much appreciated.

BarmyBubba

To start with you will more than likely need more than a couple of grand as a deposit. Some lenders will give 100% mortgages but I would find it highly unlikely if you are both around the 18 year old age.

Most lenders now go for affordability rather than a ratio of your wages.

I would probably find a mortgage broker and get advice from them, or the bank that you use.

karukai

Ok. We could very easily save up, providing we waited a while before buying - the only reason we're in a hurry now is the fact that it just seems stupid to pay such high rent when that money could be going towards paying for something we will actually own outright.

Also, don't know if it would make much difference, but I'm 24.

BarmyBubba

I understand what you mean about paying rent. In a way it is dead money and certainly not an investment of any sort.

How good is the credit history of you and your gf? Do you pay your monthly obligations on time and always have done so? This is very important.

Probably would be good to pay off the £2000 as well if you can.

seek_2

pay off the £2k debt.

i have two young friends aswell they are both on £15000 a year and they found it very hard to get a £100k mortgage they had to go for a house that was £80k.

good luck but i think you will find it hard with the amount of money you's are earning.

and £450 a month is pretty cheap rent.

GL

cupid_s

my husband was offered a 71k mortgage on the basis of him earning £14000 a year. They said that we could afford this (and my salary wasn't taken into account at all as i'm a student - though i was getting 9500 tax free). If i could get proof I would be getting that money for the next 3 years (which I was/still am) they would have given us 96k. However I couldn't get the forms sorted in time so we just took the 71.

I think the reason was though was we had a big deposit. The bank will never be out of pocket with us even if they had to repossess the house as we have so much money of ours tied up in it.

If you pay off your debts (all your outgoing like loans etc are taken off your affordability measurements) and try to save a pretty decent deposit you'll stand a much better chance