FTB house hunting 5.5 hours drive away - advice?

Procrastinator333

Would life not be simpler if you did this the other way round?

E.g. Buy a house in your current area now. Live in it for 4 years. At that point, move to the new area. By then, with your starting deposit from year 1, plus 4 years payments and maybe a few overpayments you should have a lot of equity. If you can't get a mortgage at that point, rent out house number 1 and rent in the new area while you build up a few years of accounts as self employed.

lilac_rainbow

8pnoodles wrote: »

Would a mortgage be easy/possible to get when you are six months off retirement?

I don't know if things have changed but you used to get a form signed by your CO for a mortgage and I have seen the CO refuse for soldiers in their last year

8pnoodles

Lilac - thanks for that, we will check into it. I know a lot of soldiers buy property and have to let it out. We move so much, often overseas. Maybe DH can ask around and see what others do.
We rent off the army right now and pay something like £150 for a three bed house so buying here to live in it would be pointless really. Also how could we guarantee to sell when we need to?
We are in the middle of nowhere here, no jobs for civvies.
In the area we want to go, the business would thrive, but as a backup, I should be able to pick up work in my specialised career (pre-business) easily. And DH could get driving work if necessary too.

Gonna make an appointmet with a mortgage advisor to try and get our facts straight and see what we can do.

[Just had a great night on eBay - got an extra £200 towards our deposit fund. Yay!]

dorset_nurse

I don't think you have to ask your CO for a mortgage, just like you don't have to ask them permission to marry any more!
It may be difficult to get a mortgage but the forces do give an interest free loan of about 8k to help soldiers with a deposit on a home.

Stay in your married quarter as you won't get a better deal elsewhere, and either save for your deposit or buy to let. Buying to let means it may be more difficult to get a mortgage and you may need a bigger deposit. There are loads of things you need to know about letting so search some of the threads on here to get an idea of the law and your responsibilities.

My OH is at the end of his service, but he hasn't tried getting a mortgage yet. Would be interested to hear how you get on!