Mortgage application - lending criteria.

stefdunn123

Hi everyone,

This is a bit of a rant/wondering what other people would do or expect in my situation.

My husband and I have just come back from an appointment with a mortgage adviser at Natwest to apply for one of their mortgages. We'd previously had a lot of communication and an appointment with one of her colleagues at Natwest, everything seemed to be fine and so we had to wait a week for an appointment.

The mortgage adviser then advised us that she wasn't even able to agree a mortgage in principle because of two things: two of my husband's outgoings and one of the amounts that I'd been paid in my 0 hours contract work. My husband's outgoings were his NHS lease car (which he needs as he works in the community) and his student loan for one particular month (he had done a lot of on-call work that month so his pay was high and therefore his student loan for that month was high). I changed from a full-time contract to a bank work contract when I became a student in September. One of my payslips was very low compared to the other two that she was looking at.

Before this, my impression of mortgages was that they averaged everything out. What has happened here is that they made a note of my husband's gross salary plus an average of his overtime, and took away the lease car money but then also the highest student loan payment out of the three months which doesn't seem fair. As they're linked, if they were looking at the highest student loan payment, then shouldn't they assume that particular month's pay (when he did a lot of overtime and therefore earned more) is the average?

Similarly, I thought they do an average of my three payslips. I was told the underwriters would look at the lowest amount/worst case scenario.

We have a deposit of 18k and have had an offer accepted on a house for £155k. We aren't able to progress with Natwest. However, alongside this, we did get a mortgage in principle from a broker with a range of £120k-160k. After the appointment with Natwest today, we contacted the broker again and he has all of our details now and he's going to see what is available for us.

I'm just wondering if anyone has had a similar experience or if I should expect the worst from the broker given what Natwest said? It's so frustrating because we pay £750 in rent per month (and a mortgage payment would be much cheaper), we always have a chunk of money left at the end of the month, my salary will go right up when I get a job after I graduate yet apparently we can't afford a house.

amnblog

Sounds like the broker is already on top of this. Don't confuse or worry yourself further on here. Leave it to the broker.