Mortgage, DMP, 2Kids and 2 Bedrooms!

jackelliot

Hello all, looking for some advice. Me and the missus bought the house a number of years ago when "self-cert" mortgages were all the rage!! A nice, little 2 bedroom home to start with. We couldn't really afford it but it was pretty much the cheapest house available at the time.
Over the years, various things have happened, made redundant a number of times, wrote a car off, suffered with bouts of depression, had 2 kids etc. You know, the usual stuff! Anyway, money was never an issue as Halifax were always happy to allow us to increase the overdraft to £1000 more than was ever paid into it per month (then charge £1 a day for using it) or extend the mortgage (with self cert style income declarations-again that were ridiculous based on our actual income) or increase the 2 credit cards to ridiculous levels etc. Any way, after years of this abuse, I called a stop to it and got stepchange involved and started a DMP.
Things are going well. paid off a couple of debts but still got about 18k to go so should be clear in the next 2-3 years. Looking at a promotion (big money) at work in the next 6 months due to rapid expansion within the company. The only problem is that our "nice little 2 bedroom" is now a tiny little 2 bedroom home to a mardy 13 year old son and tempremental 11 year old daughter (oh, and 2 guinea pigs - can't fit a dog in).
We have never missed a payment off the mortgage, we are not tied to any deal as that period finished some time ago. The mortgage is fully portable and can be moved to another property (currently approx £130k to pay.) House value is approx £140k so not a lot of equity in it.
I just wondered if there was anybody out there who may be able to advise how/if we would be able to progress up the housing ladder to a bigger property. The council don't want to know however, I don't know how to get involved with this help to buy schemes (are they worth looking at). We have 2 large scale developments of housing in close proximity coming up over the next 12 months.
Any advice, gratefully appreciated!!

ACG

Porting means you can apply to move the mortgage to a new property, there is no guarantee it will get accepted and realistically I cant see that happening.

When did you get in touch with stepchange and get the ball rolling with that?
If it is less than 3 years I think you are going to need a 15% deposit.

jackelliot

Hiya ACG. Thanks for the reply. Started with Stepchange around 5 years ago. Had major grief with Halifax to start with (solicitors letters etc.) Unfortunately, they hold my mortgage. Thankfully, I bank elsewhere now! Seriously hold these guys accountable for the state of my affairs now! If they said "NO" 10-12 years ago, I wouldn't be here now in this mess!

ACG

Assuming your mortgage has been paid in full on time for the duration then there could be a lender who would consider it - rates would be around 4.5%ish.

Im not judging or wanting to get in to argument but you are blaming the bank for your circumstances? I would expect a child to eat all of the chocolate infront of them and get sick later on. I would not expect an adult to sit there and do the same thing.

SavingSteve

ACG is being far too kind on you.

You've over stretched, lied on numerous times to your lender with your self certs and have been entirely irresponsible.

And now you want to overstretch again. The mind boggles.

ViolaLass

If you're going to be getting 'big money' in six months' time, why not wait til then?

jackelliot

SavingSteve wrote: »

ACG is being far too kind on you.

You've over stretched, lied on numerous times to your lender with your self certs and have been entirely irresponsible.

And now you want to overstretch again. The mind boggles.

Hiya SavingSteve. Thanks for judging. The "lying" you refer to, believe it or not, was as a result of the bank "advising me" on what to say when what they should have said was "I'm sorry sir, there's nothing we can do". At that point I would have sought debt help (7/8 years or so earlier) and be out of debt now. But hey ho, I'm not. Hence, I'm on here looking for decent advice. If you don't have any, then let me thank you for looking and move on.

Kynthia

Your whole post is blaming Halifax for lending you more money than you could afford and then asking advise on how to do the same again? Don't you see that? Will you then blame the new lender in the future if you struggle?

If you need more space and don't meet anyone's lending criteria due to no savings or equity and lots of debt, then either sell or let your place and rent somewhere bigger. I'd suggest selling rather than becoming a landlord as there's lots of regulations to follow and it take months to evict someone if they stop paying rent which means you need to pay the mortgage and your own rent during this time. However if house prices are increasing where you are you possibly don't want to come off the housing ladder and miss any equity gains. The choice is yours but I'd advise research on becoming a landlord and getting consent to let from Halifax.

SavingSteve

jackelliot wrote: »

Hiya SavingSteve. Thanks for judging. The "lying" you refer to, believe it or not, was as a result of the bank "advising me" on what to say when what they should have said was "I'm sorry sir, there's nothing we can do". At that point I would have sought debt help (7/8 years or so earlier) and be out of debt now. But hey ho, I'm not. Hence, I'm on here looking for decent advice. If you don't have any, then let me thank you for looking and move on.

The advice is to wait for your big pay rise and see what you can afford at that point. And I mean really afford, I.e. based on your new joint salary and amount of equity / debt what a lender is willing to lend, not decide on what house you want and then work backwards to how much you want to borrow.

And stop blaming Halifax for your actions. The chocolate bar analogy by ACG says it all there really.

getmore4less

agree ^^^

If space now is your priority

Sell pay off as much debt keeping an emergency fund
Rent somewhere bigger.
save up to buy in a few years.

Bit surprised you went on DMP for over 6 years, when I was involved in debt management 6 years ago other options would normally have been considered like IVA.


Are you on interest only the equity seems low for at least 5 years since your last increase in borrowing.

You may be better of on the debtfreewanabe board to get a proper grip on where you and where you will be so you can plan, this is not really a simple mortgage situation.