Advice on new mortgage please

Funky01

Hi,

My husband and I would like to remortgage. We moved house last summer, and due to redundancies, and moving to a new area due to my husbands new job, we weren't in a position to shop around, so we basically sweet talked our original lender in letting us keep the same amount as we had on the old house.

We have been paying this new mortgage now for 5 months. My husband has now been in his job for nearly a year. I have just recently been offered a permanent contract from a tempory role I have been doing. Husbands salary is £35k, and mine will be £15k.

The outstanding balance on the mortgage is £92k. The house is worth around £150k. We pay approx £630 per month at the current rate.

We would like to find another deal, that would save us money, stay as a flexible mortgage, and also alllow us to borrow an additional fund to pay off debts. (I realise some people may not agree with this, but its the decision we want to make - we do not want to go down the IVA route, but are currently struggling with repayments). I used to earn around £25k, and having had months without a salary due the redundancy, debts built up even more. I'm now on a lesser salary, so we are struggling.

We would like the mortage to cover approx an extra £50-60k if possible, which would help us enormously.

Can anyone recommend any lenders who might look at us? I worry about how it looks transfering mortgages and asking for so much extra, plus the fact that I havent been permanent in my job for long (although I have worked there for nearly 3 months as a temp so far!).

There are some things we could do with doing on the house aswell, so some of that £50-60k would be used or that. The rest would cut out a fair chunk of debts, and then any remaining debts will be shifted to the lowest rate balance transfers we can get and paid off monthly with as much as we can afford above minimum payments.

It is imperitive that we sort out money out soon, as we have a baby on the way aswell!

I would welcome any general advice.

Thanks.

mountainofdebt

Well my first piece of advice is to seriously rethink about making an unsecured debt (such as cc debts) into a secured debt (ie mortgage). If something disasterous happened then you could lose your home, plus the fact you are using up what equity you have in your home and I think if the higher loan to value mortgage you want the higher the costs.

Also are you in any penalty period with your new mortgage?

It may be worth you taking a wander to the debt free wanabee board. If you post details of all your income and expenditure (inc balances, aprs and limits) then you can be offered advice that will help you clear those debts without doing something that create a deeper hole for you.

danjberry

i would visit an fees free mortgage broker and explain the circumstances, print off a copy of your experian report to show him/her and find out if you have any redemption penalities with your current lender. If you do, a further advance may be possible with your current lender to avoid the penalties. Again an advisor will be the best person to ask if this is the best scenario.

Funky01

Thanks for your replies....

There is no early redemption fee with the current mortage - I made sure of that when we took it out. There's just the usual end of mortagge fee which is £150, but otherwise, we're free to go whenever we like. We'd like to change for various reasons, but one is that we're just a bit fed up. I always get to speak to the same advisor (I wonder if they have any others there sometimes!). He doesnt really have much of a personality - all very corporate etc if you know what I mean, and we'd prefer to start afresh with someone new really. That may sound silly, but we've been with them now for around 3 or 4 years (since they took over the company we had our original mortgage with), and we find them a bit stuffy really. Plus, they make us have their own buildings insurance or else they charge us additoinal money for "admin". Otherwise, they are OK, he[pful enough, and we havent got that bad an interest rate really, but we'd just like to move so that we can rejuggle finances and start afresh with a different provider.

I do go on the Debt Free Wannabe board, but really, we need something more drastic to seriously cut costs down before the baby comes. I know tying debts into a mortage is a last resort, but if it svaes a hunk of money each month, then we would be better off. If the absolute worse did happen and we absolutely couldnt afford to make payments on a mortgage, we are pretty sure family would help out if need be. But before anyone suggest asking them for help now, that is not what we want to do. We dont want anyone else to know basically.

Any other advise greatfully received.

Thanks.