Any Chance / What To Do

AlfieBeau

We're in need of some advice as I don't think I'll make it until Tuesday and keep my sanity!!

It's a bit of a long story but here goes.

We got into a bit of trouble financially about 12 years ago when I took extended maternity leave, a few years after we sold our house and paid what off debts we could with the proceeds and went into rented accommodation.

Since then are incomes have substantially improved and credit files are looking better as things have dropped off and we have history of looking after the credit we do have.

Earlier this year we used my husbands annually bonus to clear a majority of our credit cards etc in preparation for looking to buy a house. My hubby does have a default from 2011 (although the original default was way back when the original troubles started) this was also cleared earlier this year but not in full as an offer was made for us to settle but when I checked our credit reports it was still showing so we have now settled the remaining amount, but this has not yet updated on the credit files although we do have written confirmation.

Other than this our credit files make quite good reading so we decided to talk a MA to see if it was worth trying for a mortgage rather than wait another 18 months

After disclosing all of the above we received a DIP from the Halifax potentially up to £775K !!!!! We don't want to borrow any where this amount and would quite like to use 'Help to Buy' as we are starting from scratch. We have around £70k cash to cover deposit and stamp duty wether it be 5% or 10% on a 'used' house.

With this in mind we went looking for a new property up to the max of £600k, after much deliberation we decided to reserve a new build with a purchase price of £575k. This was after a few false starts, including trying to reserve a NewBuild not on help to buy with a 10% deposit to find out that we can't get a 90% mortgage on a new build. Now to be told that the Halifax max advance on a 'Help to Buy' is £350k. Aghhhhhh.

We have now spoken to another MA who seems to be a bit more switched on and has suggested we try Nationwide. Are they likely to consider us (we both bank with them - but not sure this makes a difference). He seems confident he'll get us a mortgage, I'm just not so sure it'll be a help to buy.

I just want somebody to tell us what criteria we fit into and what we should be looking for.

Anyone care to comment either to bring me back down to earth or to put our fears at ease?