Reduce to Increase...Towards the Forever Home...

jenni_fer

My last post on here feels a lifetime ago!

At the end of June our sellers went AWOL, when they eventually spoke to the solicitor again they pulled out of the sale. Our buyers are waiting (for now) but we are struggling to find anything worth moving for and the market is getting crazier by the day.

Still, it's quite satisfying to see the mortgage payment go out and the same amount come out of the offset each month!

jenni_fer

Urgh, nearly 6 months on and not much else to tell!

We've still not found anywhere new to buy, pulled our house off the market in November and re-sold it in Jan (for a good chunk more!)
There's still nothing much on the market though. We did fall in love with one property, but despite offering £50k over asking we still got outbid. If it hadn't been a huge doer-upper we might have been tempted to go even further but it needed so much work we really couldn't justify overpaying any further.

The mortgage fix runs out in June/July, wondering if we should pay the balance off or just leave it sat there. Is it best to keep a mortgage if we want a new one soon or be completely free. I think keep but am still debating a little (it's fully offset so we pay no interest).

jenni_fer

Another month with little to no progress! 

We have actually potentially found a property to purchase privately now,  but there is an ongoing chain and it doesn't feel likely enough to bother telling our EA/ buyers just yet.
Nothing suitable on the open market still.

We had the 'you can apply for a new rate' letter from the bank but think we're going to leave it run,  moving to the SVR will make no difference and I don't think there is any benefit in settling it while we might hopefully move within a few months. 

jenni_fer

Feeling optimistic we have now applied for a mortgage on the hopeful private purchase. The sellers have a best and final offer in on a property which I dont think they'll get but am hopeful they will find something soon and we felt it was worth at least attempting to lock in a rate now before things increase further as the rate we've just applied for is already a good 50% higher than we would have been paying last year.

We've gone for another offset as we decided to borrow a little more than we technically need, just to make sure we don't feel stressed about the economy and things like inevitably needing a new car etc. Hopefully we'll keep the additional fully offset and only be costing us the 0.3% additional interest on the rest but we found our current offset really suit us so hopefully this all happens and we can move and pay this new one off with similar enthusiasm!

jenni_fer

Oh got to love my optimism back in March!
It's now November, I'm still not moved!

Hopefully progress that might actually lead to us moving end of this year/start of next!
Sadly mortgage rate have pretty much doubled since that March application but I'm past caring at this point!

Daring to think about my new and hopefully final MFW journey, we've applied for an offset again and I'm setting a 5 year target!