First time buyers- reassurance/advice please!

cattyboo

Hi all,

I honestly don't know where to start with this, I'm at my wits end (already!) :wall: My partner and I are currently renting but our landlord wants to sell so we've been looking at buying a house. The one we're renting is on the market for waaaay above our price range but we had a good look around and found a really gorgeous house that's pretty much perfect and in our budget.

I've been using London and Country as a broker who have been fabulous so far, but things aren't as simple as they could be (are they ever?!) and I've reached a point where the stress is making me ill so thought I'd ask you nice people for a bit of advice or reassurance as MSE forums have been so helpful in the past.

The deposit isn't an issue, we have a 25% deposit coming from savings/very generous parental help combined. The complication is that I'm doing a PhD, which I thought was a good idea but I've since learned was about the most stupid decision I've ever made ever and if I could have my time again I'd never have done it :doh: Anyway, c'est la vie. I get a pretty decent stipend for the PhD, equivalent to about 17k taxed so mustn't grumble too much! My partner has a nice normal job, not a massive earner but it's a permanent contract and a nice steady wage.

Having used the broker we cut out a lot of unnecessary applications with lenders who wouldn't be willing to accept my income and focussed on the few that would. We made an application with ING Direct and were accepted in principle, paid for a survey which came back fine and sent in the income evidence they wanted, then they turned us down as it was 'against their lending policy' to take a PhD stipend as part of a mortgage application- broker was very cross at their time wasting and we're pretty angry too, though more upset

We've since applied (via nice broker) to NatWest and been accepted in principle again, which is good, and this time the broker has a copy of an online chat with an underwriter to say that they'll accept my income. We'll have to pay for another survey but it's looking better so far, we've got the nice big deposit, a bit of back up on the weird income front and we're both NatWest customers. We're about to send off our income and identity evidence, which is where it all went wrong last time.

Until fairly recently I was in my overdraft (arranged) quite a lot but am solidly in the black now, and so it shall stay! We don't have any bad credit, and guess we must have passed a credit check to get the the agreement in principle stage, I'm just so worried that it's all going to fall through again. We've got a limited choice of lenders who'll take my income in the first place and I know it must be partly 'once bitten, twice shied' following our experience with ING but I just have this overwhelming feeling that it's going to go wrong again.

If we did get refused again that would basically be it, we'd have to phone the solicitors and estate agent and tell them that we couldn't buy the lovely house after all, honestly just the thought of having to do that makes me cry. I can't think of anything else and feel like such a tool for ever thinking that doing a PhD was a good idea, worse still I might well be making my partner put his life on hold too as a consequence

So sorry for the loooong message, thanks for reading, if anyone has any words of advice then they'd be so welcome,

Love C xx

sunshineband

Hi i don't have any personal experience although we did get a mortgage with Natwest which was pretty pain free (moved into our first please end of August) I dont know how useful this is but my work colleague just went through the application process and her husband is doing a PHD and they applied through Natwest. Obviously i don't know the ins and outs of their personal information but they were approved last week for their mortgage (first time buyers as well)

cattyboo

Thanks so much sunshineband that's good to hear! I know it's just a feature of the internet that reviews are mainly bad but there does seem to be a lot of negative experiences out there so it's helpful to hear sometimes it does work out! If this falls through we'll be down over £1000 through solicitors fees and surveys and still no closer to buying a house which would be flipping dreadful! Thanks again, feel a bit better for reading your reply xx