Advice on How Much I Can Borrow

Dave80s

Hi all, I'm looking for a joint mortgage but struggling to find anyone who will lend us enough.

I know the concept of your multiplying your salary to see how much you can borrow is becoming outdated, but are there any providers who have a reputation for offering more?

We have £40k joint income, looking for £210k which is just under 5.5 times our salary. Our deposit is £265k.

No bad credit or loans etc. We have 2 children of school age.

London and Country said £185k max. I've tried some of the calculators like Tesco, they come out similar, are they accurate? Only joy we had was Santander calculator said £210k but do they have a bad reputation on here?

Thanks for reading, Dave.

Thrugelmir

Multiples of salary have ever only been a guide. As peoples circumstances differ widely. A multiple of over 5x is at the high end of the scale. To put this in perspective lenders new lending business consistantly averages around the 3.2x level. As lenders run there mortgage books top down rather than bottom up.

At a 7% interest rate your proposed mortgage would cost in the region of £1500. What proportion is this of your take home pay. Gives a far better indication of affordability.

MoHunter

It does sound like this would be quite a stretch - our joint income is £57k and I think we'd struggle with such large mortgage payments especially if interest rates go up... if one of you lost their job then the other's income would not cover your outgoings by a long shot (this is assuming you're both on equal salaries of course). Personally I'd want to be sure that we could manage, even if it would be tight, if something like that was ever to happen.

I wouldn't want to go with Santander myself but that's me.

Rmphotography

I personally wouldn't recommend Santander one bit.
The underwriters are VERY picky, and every time they request information from you, you go to the back of the queue again and have to wait.
We got fed up of waiting after 9 weeks, withdrew our application and went with someone else.
If you look around on here there is a thread from a lot of other people all complaining about how crap they are.

amnblog

The calculator figures you see on line (if you use them correctly) merely suggest the top end of what the Lender may provide.

Affordability in most cases will be affected by credit score and they may be a number of factors that come to light during the application that will also affect the figure.

Engage a competent whole of market broker to obtain the highest possible lending figure.