Buying our first house at the same time of a redundancy

onwards&upwards

Thomas Cook’s troubles have been headline news. Presumably you sent payslips from Thomas Cook to your lender.

Really not worth the risk, just be honest.

AlexMac

I'm with those who say "Go for it!"

In my experience, a house is likely to be the best longterm asset you'll ever own, so carpe diem and all that. Worth skinting yourself for in your early years. I've lived through two downturns; in 1987-8 and 2007-8 when in some areas house prices dropped by 25%, but we seemed to have dodged the bullet on waht was looking like a 20-year old cycle. I can't see another savage drop happening soon, so why wait?

I was made redundant in my 40's (the early 1990's) and took a pay cut to get back in; it happens. But buying a total wreck of a house in a carp area for what now seems like small change in 1975 was the best thing I ever did... we've moved on (not always up) many times, invested a lot of DIY sweat, and are lucky enough to be now sitting on north of a million quid of equity despite never being high earners..

So, to repeat... go for it

System

It is really easy just to ask your solicitor, that's what they are there for. Their advice will be a zillion times more useful than a load of strangers on an internet forum encouraging you to be dishonest, avoid taking legal advice, and commit potential financial suicide.

babyblade41

If your partner is still working there is absolutely nothing to tell the lender , they deal with facts only not what if's

Only you know if you will be able to afford it on one wage after completion, many get made redundant whist having a mortgage and lose their jobs.

System

babyblade41 wrote: »

If your partner is still working there is absolutely nothing to tell the lender , they deal with facts only not what if's

Only you know if you will be able to afford it on one wage after completion, many get made redundant whist having a mortgage and lose their jobs.

The news is reporting that by Monday, Thomas Cook will probably have ceased trading, unless it gets a government bailout, and the OP's partner will therefore have been made redundant by business open. The OP would still have several weeks to take proper legal advice from his solicitor, before HSBC lends him the funds. The honest course is the best course.

diggingdude

I imagine come next week the solicitor might ask what's happening with the job situation

Arklight

Diocletian_II wrote: »

It is really easy just to ask your solicitor, that's what they are there for. Their advice will be a zillion times more useful than a load of strangers on an internet forum encouraging you to be dishonest, avoid taking legal advice, and commit potential financial suicide.

OP needs to be very careful here.

The solicitor is also acting for the lender. They are under a legal obligation to pass on relevant information specific to the loan that they believe the lender doesn't know about. Things like impending unemployment could very well come under that.

Otherwise, the bank has no idea whether you have exchanged or not, and they can pull the mortgage at any point they want. It is, from what I can tell, unlikely that your case would be audited again once an offer has been made (and employment checks redone), but whether this is good enough odds to take a risk that would possibly financially ruin you if an offer is pulled after exchange, is your decision.

FWIW it probably is rare, and it probably almost never happens, but it does sometimes happen. One of my colleagues was buying a house just after the crash in 2007. They had had an offer made which the bank suddenly rescinded (thankfully before exchange) and made conditional on a lot of expensive structural reports about drains coming from a part of the survey they'd previously cleared.

Their broker said that he had clients who were having offers pulled after exchange on fairly flimsy grounds, from lenders who were trying to shrink their loan books.

The safest thing you could do is approach your broker and see if you could get the mortgage on your salary alone.

onwards&upwards

If I was an underwriter for a lender i’d be checking if any current cases were for Thomas Cook employees on Monday morning.

This isn’t some small local business going bust, or a company making a few low key redundancies while still runnng otherwise. This is a huge company going boom with about 9000 jobs gone overnight and as all the papers are loving calling it ‘the biggest peacetime repatriation of Brits abroad’.

They can’t just not tell them and think they won’t find out!

lookstraightahead

Does everyone inform their mortgage lender when their financial situation changes? What about 3 years in to a mortgage you leave to have a baby / take a pay cut / get made redundant?

onwards&upwards

lookstraightahead wrote: »

Does everyone inform their mortgage lender when their financial situation changes? What about 3 years in to a mortgage you leave to have a baby / take a pay cut / get made redundant?

No, because the lending decision has already been made. Fraud is obtaining money by deception, nothing to do with paying back money you owe!

When you borrow money you have to declare that you aren’t aware of anything that might change your ability to repay. If you lie, that’s mortgage fraud.