mortgage neutral by 2026

pathtofreedom

I'm jumping the gun a little bit but new place deserves a new diary I think.

I am currently waiting to exchange/complete, and will hopefully move around April into a forever home.

I have a place to sell, but have learnt a lot of hard lessons about credit crunches, 100% mortgages, bad banks and negative equity while I've lived here. This means although I have overpaid enough to build up some equity, I'm down about 40k on the place I'm selling, which is a mix of negative equity, and work on the house over the past 9 years like a new boiler etc. That 40k doesn't even include the crazy interest rate I was stuck on for years, thanks to nram not changing deals and not being able to remortgage cause of the negative equity.

Anyway enough of the past and one to the new exciting home. Hopefully this one won't have such bad lessons to teach me this time though.

I'm looking at a new mortgage of about £153k, I will do exact figures once I complete. This will actually be two mortgages as I'm porting my current one, then the same lender is doing a second mortgage for the extra borrowing I need for the new place. It will be 75% LTV this time though rather than 100% so I'm hoping that will protect me if there is another house price crash like 2007.

The main reason I need to pay this off asap though, is I have health problems which mean I am not going to be able to work full time, if at all, forever. I'm 38 now and want to both OP and save to get to the point I'm mortgage neutral as soon as possible. Also though I'll need to retire early, as there is no way I'll manage working till I'm 67, I'm not even sure if I'll make it to 47 still full time right now. I can't get income protection insurance of any kind either so this is all on me. I'm hoping though even if I can't manage full time I'll still be able to do enough part time work to get enough NI years to get a full state pension. As well as chuck as much as I can in a private pension so I have that to look forward to, even if there are a lot of lean years between paying off the mortgage and being able to take that.

Enough doom and gloom though and back to the exiting new place :j

06/01 offer accepted on my current house
13/01 mortgage in principle agreed
23/01 made an asking price offer
25/01 offer accepted
27/01 full mortgage application over the phone
28/01 sent proof of wage slips, bank statements etc to mortgage company
28/01 dropped off paper work to solicitor for selling my place
05/02 paid mortgage fees and for survey
08/02 quote for moving with packing included
11/02 my buyer has some questions about building regs etc, so point solicitor at paperwork I'd already given them
12/02 survey for mortgage valuation
13/02 some of the searches come through which are fine

So next I'm just waiting for the rest of the searches to come through, and the full mortgage offer, and then I think it is just getting the paperwork finished. Hopefully then I'll get some dates for exchange and completion.

It seems to be taking forever as well as going really quickly at the same time. My buyer needs to complete before the new stamp duty kicks in, but if I can't buy that fast I'll just rent my house from them but hopefully we will get the dates to work.

Where I'm buying even though I offered full asking, it is actually 20k cheaper than that as it sold for before Christmas, but that buyer had to pull out due to chain issues, so they knocked 20k off for a quick sale.

I'm trying to ebay / facebook sell loads of stuff as my new place is a lot smaller, so I have too much stuff and furniture for it. It is a bit gutting having to pretty much give everything away, but I don't want to have to pay to move things and still not be able to sell it later. Really a clean slate with all this will be better in the long run I think.

So this is the start of my new house story, well done if you're still reading by this point. :T

pathtofreedom

2016 final figures

Well due to 2016 curse the figures have gone out of the window a bit.

I bought the place in april for £205k with a £153,892.45 mortgage.

As of 21/01/17 this stands at £150,148.87 due to just making minimum payments and having some cash in the offset.

2017 must try harder.

pathtofreedom

<saving space for 2017 final figures>

pathtofreedom

<saving space for 2018 final figures>

pathtofreedom

<saving space for 2019 final figures>

pathtofreedom

<saving space for 2020 final figures>

pathtofreedom

<saving space for 2021 final figures>

pathtofreedom

The sun is out and the snow from yesterday is starting to melt. Hopefully it won't snow much again now this week.

I ended up buying some bits for the dog last night. She really needs a new bed, lead and harness. I had been holding off getting them to save money, but on reflection with so much change from moving house soon, I think it is better to get the new bed especially now so she can wear it in here. That is the biggest thing I think I'm worried about with the move is how she'll settle and sorting out new dog walkers etc. She is a rescue so gets spooked easily already so all this upheaval is going to be tough on her. So any tips on moving areas with a dog are very welcome.

I am thinking about ditching sky and all live TV when I move. For years I lived without a tv in my 20s, but now I watch more boxset anyway so faster broadband with Netflixs and similar I think might be worth a try. I'm out of contract on the sky anyway, so i should just be able to give a months notice I think, once I have the dates for the move. It might help me have more time to do some coursera courses too, if I don't have as much to just zone out to on sky. That and take advantage of my work safari books subscription.

I've worked out if I can manage ops of 388 a month, that will knock 10 years off the new mortgage when I get it. So that's what I'm going to try to start at. It might have to depend on how much the bills are there or not. It is something to aim for to start with though.

pathtofreedom

Busy week at work this week, but good news the new mortgage was approved today. So just need to keep chasing the solicitor to see if the dates are still going to work for end of March.

Sold a couple of things on ebay, but still not enough to clear the house yet. So I need to try and catch up on some sleep as I've not been sleeping too well, then tackle a different room over a couple of days each time I think. Then once each room is sorted I can close the door on it until the movers need to come.

Pay day soon, so can have fun playing with ynab once I know how much last months overtime comes to.

pathtofreedom

Things were going so well I thought, now I've had my 3 things I think all in a couple of days.

The mortgage offer came through, but I noticed the valuation part said the house is on mains drainage when it isn't. I pondered about it but in the end I thought it best to tell the mortgage company, rather than get caught out later. I did tell them when I applied it wasn't on the mains. They are going to talk to the valuers about it, but they don't think it will be an issue. So fingers crossed for that.

My second thing is my boiler is now playing up, I have done some googling and it looks like it does need parts to fix. So I've paid the £99 excess for my boiler insurance to get someone to come out and look at that.

My third and possibly worst thing though is my solicitor has been in a car accident. I don't know how bad but that is why I haven't been able to get hold of her all week. My buyers are still waiting for the answers to their questions, which is just the last bit before we can exchange. Hopefully she isn't too bad, or I can get them to transfer the case to someone else so we can still complete before the stamp duty changes.

Just must keep thinking happy thoughts about all this and just like the exotic marigold hotel, it will be alright in the end, if it isn't alright yet, then it isn't the end.

lippy1923

Good luck with being mortgage neutral