Husband may lose his job - should we still go ahead with the purchase?

moneyistooshorttomention

jamesd wrote: »

What did your mortgage lender say when you told them about this? Are they still willing to lend? Would they be willing to lend based on only your own income?

Just in case you didn't know it, you're obliged to inform them of material changes in circumstances before completion.

Don't exchange contracts until this is resolved. Losing the deposit if the mortgage lender refuses to continue with lending would be a very expensive problem.

But his circumstances haven't changed, as in = he still has the job.

Sometimes issues at work can go on for months, even years, but they don't result in being kicked out of a job (ask me how I know:cool:). I had to "hang on" to that last job of mine for years, knowing my employers would much rather I didn't...so that was very longlasting "issues at work". So these things can be pretty protracted.

thequant

Golden rule in these circumstances is to consider the "What If" scenario. If you can still make ends meet, even if it would be a struggle, then go for it.


If worse comes to the worse, then any hardship will hopefully be short term until the other half finds work.


Plus there are other options to help, such as renting out a room in the new place.


From reading your OP, your biggest concern is getting your husband through the tribunal. If your husband has been in his job longer than 2 years and has not committed gross misconduct then it is very difficult to dismiss someone if you follow the correct advice.


Also I would ensure that your husband insists that the company follows the correct procedures, such as them informing and allowing him representation at the tribunal.


Many companies, unofficially indicate that if you do this, it will look bad for you. But believe me, it has saved me my job in the past where others have lost theirs.

MisterB1959

zarf2007 wrote: »

Seriously, ignore the losers who are advising not to do it.


easy to give that advice when you've got nothing to lose and as a loser with five uk properties and one in france, who retired at 52 and my wife recently retired at 53, i'll take being a loser everyday thanks, its a great life this retirement malarkey !! if only our rental properties would manage themselves !




If you stay where you are your health will suffer. What would happen if that then affected your job? Plenty of people have a credit card for emergencies...just tighten your belt now and go for it. There's no reward without taking some risks in life.



deeper and deeper into debt isn't the positive step forward youre looking to make with so many personal issues yet to be sorted



And as there has been no material change to your circumstances & there is unlikely to be, there is no need to mention it to the lender.


but VERY irresponsible to go ahead when there more than a remote chance of a change

wait 12 months until issues at work are resolved,, save during that time, don't squander your money, and don't take financial risks that you cant afford to lose - if you forfeit your property you may not get another chance for a long time, life isn't a gamble its a series of choices, try to avoid uncertain ones when you know a bad choice could result in losing everything you've saved. I a NOT saying never buy, just that now might not be a good time

lisyloo

I would go for it.
Cutting back on non-essentials is not a big deal and sometimes you have to make sacrifices in life (and that doesn't sound like a big one).

movilogo

We can very comfortably live on my salary

Then go for it. Remember, tough times don't last but tough people do and people usually regret inaction later than wrong action.

Most likely he'd get another job and things would be fine.

Voyager2002

You are missing out the most important factor: whether the mortgage lender will make the funds available when it is time to complete.

Once you exchange you are legally committed to buying the property, and withdrawal after this point can be VERY expensive (not just your deposit, but you would be liable for money spent by your vendor and other people in the chain...). However, your lender is not legally obliged to lend you the money. One of the things that happens after exchange is that the lender makes more checks, perhaps even at the last minute, to ensure that your financial situation has not changed. At that point, if they found that your husband was in a situation different from that described in the mortgage application, they could well pull the plug, leaving you in a very difficult situation.

So the question of whether or not you could service the mortgage from your income alone is of purely academic interest: unless you know that the lender is willing to make the loan on the basis of your income alone. (And even then, if their final checks made them believe that you had not been honest with them they might still decline.)

ReadingTim

I guess the key issues are the extent to which getting a mortgage is dependent on your OH's income and current employment, what sort of questions the mortgage company ask to determine this, and how his company's HR department answer them.

As others have also said, you are obliged to inform them if there are any material changes in your situation since you completed the mortgage application, but it might be worth trying to ascertain what a material change might be - impending maternity leave, notice/consultation re. redundancy clearly would be, but I don't know what the position is re. performance management / disciplinary matters is - the fact that they're going down the 'internal tribunal' route suggests these issues are relatively serious, and he's some way down a formal process which an HR department may disclose, depending what's asked of them - the fact that he may be dismissed or redeployed by the tribunal suggests his employment in his current isn't 100% secure, which is the sort of question a mortgage company wants to know before they lend you the money....

If the mortgage has been approved, your obligations have been outlined previously, and the consequences are quite severe, although you could take a view as to the likelihood of the mortgage company finding out any change to your OH's employment status prior to completion... if you do down that road, you will need to consider for how long you alone could pay for the new place and OH - bouncing back from being sacked isn't easy or quick!

concernedwife

Thanks everyone for your replies.

Regarding affording to pay the mortgage, I hadn't considered things like taking in a lodger, so that's really helpful.

On the matter of the mortgage itself, the lender was willing to lend significantly more than we needed and I'm relatively confident that we could have the offer reissued just on the basis of my salary but obviously there's the risk that the lender wouldn't agree. I imagine that trying to get a mortgage with a different lender at that stage would be close to impossible as they'd presumably want a new valuation etc.

We haven't disclosed to the lender at this stage, because there's no material change in circumstances at the moment. Obviously if the worst happens whilst we're still in this process, we will be letting our broker know and taking advice on the best way to process mortgage-wise.

For the time being, I think we're going to try and delay exchange until we've got a better idea of the situation.

I'm feeling somewhat calmer about the whole situation than I was over the weekend (DH only had his meeting on Friday and as we were at a friend's house only told me about this 'update' on Saturday) and think we're just going to have to take a step back and look at this dispassionately as soon as we have some more info.

Thanks ever so much for giving me some more things to think about. Hopefully next time I post to the forum, it'll be with better news....