First time buyer - mortgage/help to buy advice

Trinitrotoluene

Hello everyone,

My knowledge on mortgages is distinctly lacking so I figured I'd reach out to the good people of MSE now I am going to be in a position to buy a house.

I'm looking for any advice/experience anyone has to input in on my situation at present.

My current financial situation:
£20k saved for deposit. Me + Partner + 2 kids. I'm earning 30k a year, my partner earns probably around £7k a year as she works part time. My partner was declared bankrupt in January for debts incurred with her previous partner. I have zero financial ties to my partner and never have had so we are both financially completely separate. Obviously I recognise this is going to mean I need a mortgage based on me alone.

This may make a difference but I'm not sure how it is dealt with. In the next couple of months I'm being made a director with shares at the company I work for. I don't have figures for this yet though and I'm not even sure if they look at things like that when you're getting a mortgage?

From the mortgage calculators I've run through it seems I can get anything from £125 to £140k mortgage. I've been putting "other income" as £0 but my partner pays me a certain amount each month towards the bills, I'm assuming I can't classify this as income on the mortgage calculator? After researching it seems like help to buy on new build houses would be quite handy for me and with my deposit would allow me to get a house around the region of £200k.

Any advice on whether this is the right direction or other ways to deal with this and go about it would be helpful and very much appreciated.

ACG

I dont do Help to buy equity loans but the equity loan goes own on your affordability - I could be wrong but I dont think you are going to be able to make it stretch to a £200k purchase price.

You are correct in that you can not take the money your partner pays you as income.

kingstreet

Her income or contribution will not be taken into account.

HTB - Equity Loan - if you are in England or Wales, add 3% of the equity loan as a credit commitment, reducing what you can borrow and the HTB calculator will not allow you to borrow more than 4.5x income and household debt to income must be under 45%.

A lender may be willing to lend you more than the Government calculator allows. You have to take the lower of the two.

It may be worth you speaking to an experienced newbuild broker, as the number of "normal" particularly estate agency advisors who don't know about the HTB calculator is astonishing.

Childcare, maintenance, credit, ground rent & service charges will also need to be taken into account for lender affordability, while the items in bold also feature in the HTB calculator.