Remortgage and maternity leave

gracie1

Hi all

I'm a regular visitor here as a "lurker" and haven't posted much but I've got lots of very useful advice in the past from reading the forum posts so I'm hoping you can help me with this query.

I bought my own little house in July of last year with a 10% deposit (mortgage: 2 year, 4.99% fixed rate) my aim is to overpay and have 15% equity by the time it comes to remortgage (accounting for some drop in price). would love to overpay more but not possible unfortunately.

I bought the house when single and so the house is in my sole name. I can therefore cover the mortgage and all other out-goings myself. Pretty quickly after I bought the house my partner and I got together and he now lives with me. He is currently an engineer and unhappy in his job and under almost constant threat of redundancy. as a result he's thinking of a career change and is likely to become self-employed in the next year or so.

We will be thinking about whether I keep the mortgage in my sole name or whether he joins me in it (Ithink the easist thing if poss. would be to keep it in my name as partner may be recently self-employed and therefore (as I understand it) might find it difficult to get approved on the mortgage. He would of course pull his weight financially. For now however that's not my primary concern.

Ok, so time to cut to the chase. We are thinking of trying to get pregnant in the next year. My fixed rate will be up in July 2012 and I'll probably want to remortgage to another fixed rate.

So in July 2012 I could be:

1. Just the same as now in which case I'll remortgage with (hopefully) not too much trouble (though i know nothing is certain.
2. Pregnant and on maternity pay (I work for the NHS so this is pretty good) and with the potential to be going back to full-time working (as far as the mortgage co. is concerned) which would cover the mortgage etc.
3. Gone back to work on part-time hours probably around half-time - enough to cover the mortgage and some bills but not all. We anticipate that my partner would be earning enough to more than cover the short-fall from my reduction in hours so there would be enough money in the pot but not in my name.

So I suppose my questions are

• Can I remortgage whilst on maternity leave? and will they take my full time salary into account at this time?
• Can my partner's earnings be taken into account (as rent maybe) even if he is not named on the mortgage.
• would it be as difficult as I think for my partner to be joined to the mortgage, given that he may well be recently self-employed

Bit of a long post - sorry!! Hope some of you helpful people can give me a bit of advice.

Thank you!

Thrugelmir

Personally I would focus on getting your partners business (self employment) up and running if that's what he would like to do.

A lot could happen in the mortgage (and property) market in the next 15 months. So in the meantime keep overpaying.

If you can afford the "remortgage" on your own salary alone then adding your partner makes little difference. As in fact there's added security for the lender. The additional dependent will affect affordability calculations though.

gracie1

Thanks Thrugelmir. I agree we're certainly going to concentrate on getting my partner's career path sorted. I also hadn't thought of the affordability calculations being impacted by dependents, so that's something we'll bear in mind now too.

I do still think it's worth getting myself informed about the potential financial implications before we take life changing steps. Any thoughts/experiences out there about the (current) situation with regard to this??

Thanks all

dimbo61

When your current deal ends what does your mortgage revert to ?
I would plan carefully when you get pregnant say after you have sorted a long term fix if you plan on staying long term in the property!
Why make life more difficult by being on mat leave when you look to remortgage
If you already have a mortgage and dont need your OH income leave it that way and overpay as much as possible

gracie1

Dimbo61 - Thanks for your thoughts. Yeah maybe you're right and we should wait a while. We just wanted to get on with things as time isn't really on our side!

Any other thoughts gratefully received!