Pregnant with mortgage - what did you say to the mortgage company?

Gefjun

Hi,

I'm 20 weeks pregnant, going to lose my job in 3 weeks (I'm a contractor) and on a joint repayment mortgage with my husband. We chose our house based on the fact that we knew we'd be having a family and I'd be giving up work, so we know we can afford everything on one wage, although there's a chance it might be a bit tight.

To make things more affordable, we wanted to go to an offset mortgage which is going to drop our mortgage payments by about £200 a month. I've already asked the mortgage company if we could move to an interest only mortgage (no mention of baby and at that time my job was secure) to be told that we had to get an endowment or ISA in place, put 3 months worth of payments in and have a letter which projected the total at the end of the 24 year remaining term we have.

Does anyone know what the criteria for an offset mortgage is? If we mention the baby, but not the job circumstances, is it going to make a difference or should we not mention anything? If we didn't mention anything, is that technically fraud? We're with Santander for our mortgage. Is there an easy way to do this without jumping through too many hoops?

Any advice appreciated,
Thanks in advance,
Gefjun x

slummymummyof3

So let me get this straight.......you have 2 years left on your mortgage and you want to change the payment terms now?

surreysaver

slummymummyof3 wrote: »

So let me get this straight.......you have 2 years left on your mortgage and you want to change the payment terms now?

She must mean 24 years rather than 24 months?

LilacPixie

I think the OP means 24 years. I have no idea about the pregnancy question, I would guess if they do not ask if your pregnant and you don't offer up that information then its not fraud however if they happened to ask and you said no then it would be. Regarding the offset are you currently tied into a deal? if so for how long, rate and what are the ERC's? How much equity do you have in your home, I would try be a bit concervetive with this. I looked at offsets and you needed 30-40% equity from what i remember

TrickyDicky

Why is an offset going to save you money? do you have substantial savings to offset the mortgage with?

Could you not just use these to make a large overpayment on your current mortgage?

bilbo51

I would imagine that the mortgage provider might have a slight interest in your income and so if you're losing your job in 3 weeks that might just be information which would be material to your application. Whether to withold this information constitutes fraud I'm not qualified to say, but it must be sailing pretty close to the wind...

Gefjun

Sorry, yes, we have a 24 year term left on our mortgage (sorry - typo). If we're lucky with the re-valulation, we'll have a 75% loan to value so should be eligible for most mortgage products.

We're currently on a 5.89% fixed rate repayment mortgage. We can switch to around a 3% offset mortgage with the same company and would save around £200 per month if we go onto that. We're also going to have at least £10k coming our way soon which we were going to use to offset it in the first instance. We have plans for investment so we need to have that money available to us and any further money generated would go back into the offset account.

Does anyone know the criteria for getting an offset mortgage?

dimbo61

Sorry your post is somewhat confusing.
Now you are expecting a baby GOOD LUCK
You are about to lose your job WHY ? Do they know you are pregnant ?
What sort of deal do you have with Santander ? and is it fixed ? when does the DEAL end ?
What does the mortgage revert to at the end of the current deal.
You dont have to tell them anything unless you are remortgaging as when your current deal ends you will just go onto what ever your mortgage paperwork said ( read the paperwork or give the lender,s mortgage center a call and ask)
Dont give them any information you dont need to just ask what does my mortgage revert to at the end of the fix ( ie tracker or SVR )
Dont panic if the paperwork is over 2 years old and it states that you would go onto the SVR which is 6% in November 2008 !!!

dimbo61

Check what your mortgage goes onto at the end of the fix!
You maybe better off doing nothing as the SVR with Santander is now 4.24%
I have a FIXED offset mortgage and love offsets but we use the offset account as a savings account

Gefjun

Thanks Dimbo61!

I'm on a contract which is coming to an end. The boss said he wanted to keep me but end of year cost cutting means he can't which I understand; he knows I'm pregnant and it's nothing to do with that. I'm looking around for other short term contracts at the moment.

In short:
Baby is due April 2011
Fixed rate doesn't end until March 2012
I don't know what the rate goes onto after the fixed rate ends but it's a long way off to take into consideration at the moment
There is a redemption penalty which we're planning to add onto the mortgage - I think we get it discounted if we go onto another of their products
I wish we'd had the foresight to do an offset mortgage from the off, since we're good savers although our house refurb has swallowed a large chunk of savings. Oh well....!

Thanks for your advice everyone

siwilks

Santander are a nightmare with mortgage applications - they make you jump through hoops, take an age to do their bit and then will refuse if it's not going to be beneficial to them. They accepted us, and then when we adjusted the parameters a bit they decided that it was too affordable for us(!) and rejected us on the mistaken judgement that it was short-term lending. Oh, and unlike most other providers they charge the arrangement fee (£1250) up front at the beginning of the process, and in our case tried to hang onto it until our IFA threatened them with the ombudsman