getting a mortgage when pregnant? Set my mind at ease

LilacPixie

Can anyone help?? I am having a mini panic at the moment.

My home is currently for sale and the plan was sell and buy a bigger 'forever' home for us all. I currently have 25-30% equity in current home and maybe more by redemption date as i'm overpaying quite alot each month.

Small problem is a 'forever home' will cost £££ and we will have a 10-15% deposit after fees, moving costs etc etc.

The market around here is pretty flat with not many FTB's and we went on market end of May, interest has been steady but not yet sold which does disappoint me but thats life and everyone seems to be in same boat. I am becoming resigned to not being moved for Christmas at this rate and I'm due in early February :eek::eek:

Anyway we have an AiP from Clydesdale bank and the mortgage guy that sorted it out for Clydesdale knows i'm pregnant, we spoke about intentions and I was upfront about it all employed offers full pay for first 26 weeks of maternity leave plus 13 weeks SMP and I have the option of doing 12 keeping in touch days which would be paid in full. Childcare costs will be zero as its done between us with some family help. The bank guy said no problem we will want to see payslip etc but no issue. We already have 2 kids and he said options for numbers of dependents are 0, 1, 2+ so as we already fell into the 2+ catagory it wouldn't make a great deal of difference unless we applied while I was on SMP only which maywell change things.

Mortgage amount we are looking for is under 2.5x joint salary and could possibly squeeze under the 2x salary level depending on what we buy and wha we sell for + overpayments between now and then.

Now people just random people like a neighbour, work 'friends', some bloke the husband plays football are all deciding to pass comment on my ever expanding bump and pending house move with things like 'You do know it's illegal to get a mortgage while pregnant' 'banks won't take a pregnant womans income into account if she is pregnant because she might quit' and other such phrases. I've had a nosey around this board and I have seen some posters commenting that a lender may have reservations about lending so i'm a bit concerned.

Obviously an AiP is not an actual mortgage offer and evn if we did a full application tomorrow they could refuse but we had sort of felt secure knowing we were mortgagable but now we may not be until this time next year :eek:

Added complication is OH has some risidual debt that does not finish until May 2012 and I am the major wage earner so if you disgard my income plus debt repayments the mortgage amount is about 6x his wage :eek::eek: so obviously not happening.

Your advice would be exaclty that advice but do you think my concerns that my pregnancy may effect mortgage at full application stage are hysterical or should we be concerned.

Nixxx

Shameless bump

smartpicture

I don't know the answer, but in your situation I would be more inclined to trust a mortgage broker who knows your exact circumstances than some bloke down the pub or the equivalent. So long as you've been honest with them, try not to worry. You could always go and see another mortgage broker (there are plenty of them around who don't charge) to get a second opinion and put your mind at rest.

dimbo61

The housing market is very quite at the moment so keep on paying the mortgage , overpaying and build up your savings each month.
Lots of women get pregnant every day so lenders must take that into account.
you have managed with 2 kids under 5 so whats the difference with having 3!
The more equity you have the happier the lender

flipper_72

Hi Nixxx,

We moved house when i was on ML earning SMP, instead of just payslips i got a letter from HR stating my salary. OH had just recieved a payrise so his payslips didn't tally with salary so he did the same. Our mortgage is with A&L. (This was last October)
HTH

LilacPixie

Thanks everyone. I really think random people are just trying to stress me out. Worse case senario is we sell and rent for a year until i'm back working again. With the market being as flat as it is around here it could be a year before we sell :eek:.

positive news is we had a repete viewer today so i hope thats positive because we have saw a house we really want

sophievenusdoom

I really can't see the mortgage lender would refuse you for being preggo when they are already well aware of the fact whilst giving you your AIP. Try not to stress (least of all because it's not good for baby lol!), and I am sure things will pan out in the end :-)

Nixxx

flipper_72 wrote: »

Hi Nixxx,

We moved house when i was on ML earning SMP, instead of just payslips i got a letter from HR stating my salary. OH had just recieved a payrise so his payslips didn't tally with salary so he did the same. Our mortgage is with A&L. (This was last October)
HTH

Anyone know if a letter from HR would be sufficient to some of the other banks?

luckyfool

Many lenders will not work from the full salary if you are off on maternity leave and are more than 3 months away from returning to work. If you are within 3 months of returning then typically a letter from your HR dept confirming your intention to return full time, date of return, salary etc would normally be sufficient. If there are more than 3 months left of your Mat leave many lenders will only work off SMP for you when calculating affordability as they reasonably take the view that you are still going to have to make the mortgage payments while on maternity leave. This view is by no means universal, and there are lenders that will work from your full time salary even if you are on day 1 of the maternity leave.

OP - I take it your application went in through a Clydesdale Bank branch adviser, or was it a broker? Either way I assume they confirmed that they had run the situation past an underwriter and that it would not be a problem? Clydesdale underwriters do have a good degree of flexibility so I would not be surprised if this was ok, but certainly if I was the broker on the case I would certainly have gotten an underwriter on the record to confirm that they were happy with the scenario.

Iris_Blue

Nixxx wrote: »

Anyone know if a letter from HR would be sufficient to some of the other banks?

The H/f told me this too last year when I was pregnant. They even said they may not even bother requesting the letter as I was already a customer.

HTH