Housewife - mortgage worry

murdoch78

Hi

I live in a one bed maisonette in a house which has been converted into two flats. Myself and my husband bought the property 4 years ago and the lady living above us is a neighbour from hell.

I gave birth to our baby boy 7 months ago and our neighbour wakes him up on a regular basis during the night on purpose. She puts on the vacuum at 1am - 2am and will vacuum the room above his/our room - gets drunk - shouts, all that kind of stuff in the early hours... My husband has tried calling her to see if she will be quite but she basically just tells us to get lost and she doesn't care that we have a child, and the noise gets worse.

I've tried calling the council and there's nothing they can do as it's 'domestic' noise.

We intended to stay in our property for a couple more years before deciding to by a house as we wanted to save as much money as we can.

I'm not intending to go back to work as I want to stay at home and look after our son. My husband has a good income (not ridiculously high, but healthy) I never earned a lot of money in my job so financially we are not missing a great deal with me not going back. It's about 20k less a year which seems like a lot of money but we are managing just fine on one income.

My question is will it be difficult to get a new mortgage for a house if I'm no longer working? How do mortgage company's treat housewives? Do both partners have to be working? do they make allowances for housewives? (i doubt it very much)

We need to start looking for a property earlier than intended because we are going out of our minds. We have to move and im so worried we wont get a mortgage and we'll be stuck in this hell. I just want to get away from her.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Typhoon2000

A mortgage will be based on your husbands income as your not earning.

whysitallsocomplicated

Hi

Dont know if it makes any differance to you but RBS allow child benifit and tax credits as additional income in their calculations.

beecher2

Go to a mortgage advisor, and go through your options. You haven't given any details about how much of a deposit you have, or what the salary multiples are, but they'll go through all that. Remember there's always the option of selling up and renting for a while.

RenovationMan

Not that I want to add to your worries, but do you think you will be able to sell your place if you have such a bad neighbour? If you can sell then why wait? I would put it on the market and sell it ASAP and move into rented accomodation, anywhere must be better than where you are right now.

If you do struggle to sell, you could invest in some soundproofing installed in your ceilings. We are in the process of renovating our old house and we have just put 75mm Kinspan insulation boards on the inside of our roof beams (we have vaulted ceilings in our bedrooms). The difference is absolutely amazing! Not only are the rooms much warmer, but the noise deadening is incredible and noticeable as soon as you go into the room. We have also started putting rockwool into our floor/celing cavities and this also has a great soundproofing effect, though not as good as the Kingspan stuff.

If you cant reason with your neighbour then block her out with insulation. You'll benefit from the increased privacy with a knock on effect of reducing your heating bills, and increased soundproofing is always a good selling point in an apartment.