Tricky Moving Home Queries

snarffie

Hi,

Lots of things that need confirming with Bank here, but I'd like to get some thoughts from the forum first.

We have a mortgage in mine + wife's name at a v.low rate lifetime tracker with HSBC. Decent equity of about 55%. We really don't want to lose this great rate. My wife will be unemployed soon as she is coming off maternity.

We would like to move house, but this seems to have some potential complications, particularly as we will require additional borrowing. I can afford the additional borrowing, whether going as joint or single application, but as my wife will effectively be earning nothing soon, we can borrow more if I am the single borrower. I suppose my question is, can we keep the existing mortgage (joint) and borrow more (single)? Are there any other things we need to be careful of with our change of circumstances? Does the fact that one of us is no longer earning put our existing rate in jeopardy?

Hope this makes sense,

Thanks,

Snarff

Thrugelmir

Even if your wife isn't on the mortgage she's still a dependent along with your child(ren). So will affect the amount you can borrow.

Suggest you make an informal enquiry as to the amount you could potentially borrow.

snarffie

So it's better to keep my wife as the joint applicant, even if we only put child benefit down as her annual income? That makes her NOT a dependent...is that right?

dimbo61

No she is still a dependant and so is your child/children.
Check with your lender what you can afford before thinking of selling/ moving up

snarffie

So, at what point does my wife become "non-dependant"? Is there normally some kind of salary cut-off. I notice that just adding my wife as a second applicant with a salary of £1000 pa bumps up the affordability by £9000! Up salary to £2000, and the affordability goes up by £17000.

Thrugelmir

snarffie wrote: »

So, at what point does my wife become "non-dependant"?

When you seperate..........:eek:

Whether she is named or not on the mortgage is irrelevant in terms of your borrowing ability.

snarffie

Thrugelmir wrote: »

When you seperate..........:eek:

Whether she is named or not on the mortgage is irrelevant in terms of your borrowing ability.

That doesn't seem to be correct.

On the HSBC website, if I put in two borrowers with 1 dependant (daughter), I can borrow 25% less than if I put one borrower with 2 dependants (wife & daughter). The total income is the same on both.

If there is only one "borrower", then there is only one name on the mortgage..is that right.