Mortgage advice first time buyer

expositouk

Dear All,

My partner and Ihave been renting while trying to save up to buy our own place. Unfortunately, our landlord has decided to sell his house so our plans are now in jeopardy. Finding a new rental place will affect our savings significantly and set us back a couple of years looking at rental properties in our area (agency fees, deposits, moving costs etc)

We have been discussing the prospect of applying for a mortage with our current circumstances but we have no idea how realistic this is, as house prices in our area are between £150,000 and £200,000. I will be grateful if someone with more experience and understanding of these issues can offer us some advice, please.


Our current circumstances are as follows:

Savings for deposit: £6,000 (we may be able to secure help from friends to raise this to £8,000)
Combined annual salary: £52,000
Credit card debts: £4,000.

Are we likely to be accepted for a 95% mortgage? We can easily pay £800 - £1,000 per month if accepted. Our credit reports are 5/5 on Noddle, if that's anything to go by. Any help is deeply appreciated

scousejen1983

Hi, me and my partner were in a similar situation. We bit the bullet and decided it was time to buy our own property (we completed on Friday!). we earned less than your combined income and also had an outstanding credit card debt of £4000. However we were in a fortunate situation as we were being gifted a deposit by my partners parents for a deposit to the amount of £24,000.
We ended up with no problems at all for the mortgage application they didn't even question the credit card debt, student loan, or car finance we have. It was all pretty smooth running, but our deposit played a massive part in that I think. its all about affordability too. we ended up offering the asking price on a property and paying £157,500.
My advice is to see a mortgage broker- they will tell you straight what your chances are, ours was a free mortgage broker and he was great.

Good Luck

MortgageMamma

Your income looks fine for what you want to borrow off the face of it, have you considered looking at the government help to buy scheme to try and boost your deposit? https://www.helptobuy.gov.uk/

expositouk

Thanks, MortgageMamma

We've been looking at the Mortgage guarantee scheme, but my understanding is that the acceptance criteria is quite strict as relatively few banks are involved? I've made an appointment with Natwest to see if they'll have us

MortgageMamma

Not that strict! check it out properly before you write the idea off, it could be a good solution for you due to your low deposit.

If you are going to do this properly the best option for you would be to use an experienced mortgage broker rather than going to a bank direct. The quality of advice is much better and a broker can troubleshoot any problems. Its not an area I have a lot of experience in but there are plenty of brokers that get involved with these schemes.

expositouk

Brilliant! I'll look for brokers then. Does anyone know any experienced / reputable ones in the Nottingham area, please? Thanks so much once again

MortgageMamma

Hi there, shouldn't matter which area a broker is in as they mostly work over the phone/internet/email these days. Very few of them see clients in person for lengthy meetings and those that do charge quite large fees. You can expect a fee of around £495 which can sometimes be added to the mortgage. If you have trouble finding a broker cherryfind.co.uk/unbiased.co.uk and vouchedfor.co.uk are good places to start

expositouk

Thanks. I've just spoken with one over the phone and he tells me we may be able to get a mortgage between 90,000 to 150,000 so it's been a very positive afternoon. We now have to sort a few things out as we will definitely be going ahead with an application.