Married first time buyers, single or join application?

ftb2017_2

My wife and I are first time buyers. Currently renting but we now want to relocate long distance out of the London area mid-end of August and buy a house we've seen priced around £155k and we aim to put down 20% deposit. My job won't change with the relocation and the salary will remain at £34k. My wife has a 40k salary that she is leaving so she will not be employed for possibly 2 or 3 months before she gets a new job.

So the question is should we do a single application without my wife on the mortgage or a joint mortgage with one applicant without a job?

Am I likely to get accepted as a single applicant?

Our situation:

• Age 30
• No debt other than student loans
• My salary 34k
• Wife leaving her 40k salary at the end of August for the relocation and will not have any earnings to declare
• No dependants
• Both have a credit card which are paid off every month and no missed payments
• Moving out of rental and relocating mid-end of August

On the MSE how much can I borrow checker it looks more favourably on the single applicant option.

We appreciate that ideally it'd be best to wait until my wife has a job and first payslip but we would much prefer to do it asap because of the prospect of taking another rental or longer term staying with parents.

SuboJvR

I can't really answer the mortgage specific question but, are you moving to a new area, or is it known to you?

If a new area it may be wise to rent first, to get a real feel for where you may want to buy. Where to avoid and where makes practical sense. Where we moved we fortunately ended up on the "right" side of town for our commute, were that not the case my 25 minute commute would've become 50 minutes due to traffic! Literally any other spot in our town would've done that to me, and I had no idea about that before we moved.

When we moved long distance it would've been great to Buy but like your wife my husband needed to secure a new job, whilst mine transferred. We couldn't be sure either where he would end up working with quite a large geographical region a possibility!

So renting made sense for us at that time. For you guys it may as well, as you can then save up a bit and then apply jointly.

Moving long distance costs a lot, too. Our removals in 2015 which took the guys two days was about £2,300.