Joint Mortgage with partner on probation period at work

Boldonglen

Hi, Me and my partner have recently made an offer on a house that was accepted. I myself earn £25K and my partner earns £13,500, we are looking to borrow £88K. I currently pay around £370 for a car loan a month that has around £2K left to pay. Since the offer was accepted we have been to a mortgage provider (Yorkshire Bank) and went through the application process.

The reason for this post is that my partner is currently on a 6 probation period at work (she has currently been working there for 2 months). The lender was told about this and they said that because of this it would have to go to an under writer to find out if her wage could be taken into consideration. They were also told that my partner has an interview with her old employer as they would like to take her back (she left because the commute to work was too long but the house we are trying to buy is closer to her old place of work so she is considering going back). I had a phone call today to say that they would not be able to accept the mortgage as the underwriters were not happy with her still being in a probation period.

When on the phone they also said that if she goes back to her old job and they are happy with her not being in a probation period they would accept the mortgage after she has been working there a month so that they can get a pay slip to see her wage.

The problem we feel with this is that we are worried that the seller of the house may not want to wait an extra month on top of the mortgage application process to sell the house. Is it standard practice to have to wait a month to get a pay slip? Could a letter from the employer stating her wage not be enough? Or even some of her older pay slips from when she used to work there if she is on the same contract?

I also asked when she was on the phone if my wage its self would cover the mortgage and she said that it would not. I have a feeling this could be because of the loan that i have to pay back for the next 5 months.

My other idea was to sell my car and pay off the rest of the money left on the loan (2K) and then ask if they could take just my wages into consideration. Is this something that could work?

I also did not mention when going through the application process that i get a bonus from work every year. The reason I did not mention this is because the bonus i get depends on how good the company has done within the past year. Do you think it would be worth letting them know about this and see if this would change the situation?

Any advice on this would be great as we are starting to stress out a little as we do not want to lose this house.

Thank you in advance

TravelBugHappy

waiting a few months for the car paymen to finish would definitely help.

Most lenders will only include annual bonus if you have payslips showing the amounts paid over last 2 years - I'm not sure about Yorkshire Bank but a quicl search on their website will tell you

amnblog

You make a mistake by trying to sort this yourself and going direct to the lender.

Don't make another, engage a mortgage broker who will introduce you to a lender with a more enlightened attitude to probation periods.

Boldonglen

TravelBugHappy wrote: »

waiting a few months for the car paymen to finish would definitely help.

Most lenders will only include annual bonus if you have payslips showing the amounts paid over last 2 years - I'm not sure about Yorkshire Bank but a quicl search on their website will tell you

Thanks. What i was thinking of doing was selling my car, paying off the rest of the loan and with the extra cash buying a new car.

I cant find anything on their site that talks about bonus but when I was doing the application process she seen that my partner had a bonus of £30 on her pay slips and I told her that this was dependant on how many sales she gets and she said they still take that into consideration.

Boldonglen

amnblog wrote: »

You make a mistake by trying to sort this yourself and going direct to the lender.

Don't make another, engage a mortgage broker who will introduce you to a lender with a more enlightened attitude to probation periods.

Thank you, The thing is if she goes back with her old employer they will not be putting her under a probation period because she used to work there. So if we do decide to try and get a mortgage from another lender the probation period issue will no longer be there. However we are worried that trying to get a mortgage from multiple lenders in a short space of time could mess up our credit scores.

Annisele

Boldonglen wrote: »

However we are worried that trying to get a mortgage from multiple lenders in a short space of time could mess up our credit scores.

Amnblog suggested that you use a broker - NOT that you apply randomly to a bundle of different lenders!

Different lenders view probation periods differently. Yorkshire might not be the best lender for you. A broker should have a pretty good idea of which lenders will and will not accept you - taking into account your actual circumstances right now.

audigex

A possible way to sidestep things, if your mortgage lender is willing to loan it to just you once that £380 bill is gone: Your partner takes out a 2k bank loan and you pay off the car loan with that money. You then take out the mortgage in your name alone, which should hopefully go through without issue.

I've no idea on the legality of this, but it seems a possible way to cut the gordian knot.