First Time Buyers - Is it worth us even trying?

Grezz24

£131,000 for a 3 bed semi new build? Thats very good, its around £180,000 for a 3 bed semi where i am looking!

jedthehumanoid

Well, they are advertised as a semi but looking at the actual development they are in blocks of 3, so a small terrace. £131000 is the price for the end plots though, the middle plot is £128000.

jedthehumanoid

Well this hasn't gone as planned. First the valuations for the house we're currently renting came in about £20000 more than we were expecting so it was out straight away. Then two different brokers told us we have no chance with the current issues on my credit report.


The advice is to wait 12 months for defaults to drop off and to put some distance between us and the late payments. I've settled the MyJar debt and asked politely if they would remove some of the late payment markers, but obviously they declined. We've contacted a third broker who apparently specialises in adverse credit mortgages but I'm not hopeful.


I wish I'd taken better care of my finances 5 years ago but there's not much I can do about it now. We really don't want to rent again but hopefully in 12 months we'll look a much better prospect for the lenders. Onwards...

BigTaff

So you have an AIP with NatWest who will have soft searched you and picked up on your adverse history. Why would you think this will be declined at full application? Soft searches seem to be just as reliable as a hard search these days. Despite common misconception soft search applications in principle DO NOT effect your credit file so fill your boots (Lloyd's, Halifax, Santander, COOP, HSBC) and get your own idea. I did, then went direct to the bank with the best deal - sounds like the "brokers" you spoke to like to cherry pick clean cases

jedthehumanoid

I was under the impression that the soft search wouldn't pick up on the adverse history and it was more of an ID/affordability check. We'll go back to Natwest for another chat anyway as they are the only people who've made any kind of positive noises so far.

Confusedftb_2

We had a DIP from Natwest which sadly didn!!!8217;t materialise as they didn!!!8217;t seem to pick up on our less than perfect history... However, we didn!!!8217;t speak to an actual human - and I think that!!!8217;s so important in situations like this - computers can!!!8217;t apply common sense and manually review every detail. Good luck to you both!

jedthehumanoid

We've been back to Natwest, credit reports in hand, to see what they thought. The gist of it is they seem relatively confident that we'll be OK, which is positive. I highlighted the bad points on my credit report and it doesn't seem to bother them that much. The only thing they mentioned is one of my defaults is showing as unsatisfied and that may need to be paid which I'll do. They're calling me on Monday after another mortgage specialist in the branch has had a look at my file so fingers crossed.

We've got a new AIP from them for now so we're tentatively looking for houses again.