Mortgage broker - ask me anything

K_S

homeless9 said:

Hi, (Topic: Adding my Help To Buy loan to my mortgage)

- 2 years into my mortgage.
- 5 year term.
- Help To Buy loan which I'll need to pay interest on starting in 3 years time. This is approx £35,000 based on my valuation of the house.

I'd like to get the Help To Buy loan added to my mortgage ASAP. House prices are going up which increases what I have to pay back, also interest rates are going up. Although I may end up with a worse interest rate than my current term if I remortgage now, I think that would at least be negated by the interest rate going up in future.

Charges for ending my current term early: There is a '5% charge on the balance owed on the day I redeem it'. I assume this means that I pay a 5% fee on whatever I owe within the 5 year term. I think this will be at worst ~£500, which isn't too bad.

I phoned my lender to see if I could get a rough idea of whether I could add the ~£35,000 to my mortgage and all they said to me was that I needed to gets a RICS surveyor to value my house and then get back to them. The problem with this is if I get the valuation done now and then go back to my lender and they say they cannot lend me the money then I'd have forked out a good chunk of money to get the valuation done for nothing as it obviously expires after a few months.

Maybe I should have again emphasised that I needed a rough idea if I'd likely be able to borrow the ~£35,000 extra before going about getting the valuation done this early into my mortgage term/only 2 years out from getting the HTB loan.

I am actually earning less now than I was when I took out the mortgage just 2 years ago as a small side business of mine ended. This hasn't caused me any issues with paying my bills etc. I made £15,000 from investments over the past 2 years, so can make a £10,000 overpayment on my mortgage which will help towards borrowing the extra money. I am employed and work a 30 hour week, but could easily work a 35 hour week if that's what needs to be done to borrow the extra money.

Sorry for the long post....

I am just after some advice on what to do and if there is anything I haven't mentioned that I should consider. Should I just contact a mortgage advisor and get them to run through my details on their systems to see if in theory any lenders would help me out with this? Do you guys think it's a good idea to get the HTB loan added to my mortgage ASAP? Should I contact my current lender again to see if they can give me a rough idea of whether they can help?

@homeless9 Quick thoughts -  

- An ERC of £500 seems quite low, are you sure you have calculated it correctly? If it's 5% and your o/s mortgage balance is 200k, that should amount to about 10k.

- Your lender should be able to tell you whether you can indeed borrow an extra 35k or not, they don't need a RICS valuation to tell you that.

- Given an ERC of 5%, you should definitely exhaust any options with your current lender before thinking of re-mortgaging (changing lenders).

salduck

K_S said:

salduck said:

Hi
at what stage should I expect to see a hard search from Barclays? And when do they book valuations? Any idea on timescales? Broker says all is fine, no documentation requested etc but nothing appearing??? 

@salduck I wouldn't worry too much about when the hard-search shows on your file as it's not always consistent. Through brokers, Barclays does a hard-footprint credit search at the DIP stage.

Valuations are booked at initial assessment, usually a couple of days after submission of the full application.

Thanks! Nothing has been booked as far as I know- submitted in full 2 weeks ago! Will chase it all on Thursday as my usual chase day!! 

Broker says all fine and just delays with Barclays due to amount been submitted before rates went up! 

IAMIAM

Which mortgage lenders allow overpayment or overpayment reserves that you can withdraw....apart from offset mortgages?

george4064

Edit……………….

K_S

IAMIAM said:

Which mortgage lenders allow overpayment or overpayment reserves that you can withdraw....apart from offset mortgages?

@iamiam None that I can think of off of the top of my head. 

katierachel

Morning all.. new to here & hoping for advice. 

My partner and I are currently in the process of buying our first home. We’re currently going through an application with Barclays, but I’m finding them rather confusing and unhelpful. 

Firstly, we’ve not got a Track It so can’t access any updates. Secondly, I couldn’t tell you what the underwriters are doing - it’s been two weeks since our telephone appointment and not much has happened since. No valuation has been booked. 

My question is, in this time of uncertainty, I’ve had a pay rise of which I’ve told our advisor who has said that it can go in the application when I get my pay slip at the end of the month. Is this going to delay things further or can they actually go ahead with the val etc whilst waiting? 

Additionally, after shopping around, I’ve now found better deals with other lenders with the help of habito. Shall we stick with Barclays or go ahead with Habito? It’s such a confusing time and I’m so nervous that Barclays are going to reject us for 0 reason! 

Also I must add, Barclays are refusing to accept my partners take home pay because he isn’t salaried (he gets paid per hour at £12 an hour and works 35-45 hours a week but 35 minimum) which is really frustrating because it says in his contract his hours, but they’re just not accepting it??

any advice would be greatly appreciated and I’d really appreciate no hate as like I said, absolute newbie to this! 

K_S

@katierachel Unfortunately, Barclays can be a p.i.t.a if there is to and fro, and in this case it looks like it's still stuck at the initial assessment stage.

If you've found a better deal through a broker, it might be worth considering going ahead with them as they will make sure that chosen lender is compatible with your requirements/circumstances before placing you with them. Good luck!

katierachel

K_S said:

@katierachel Unfortunately, Barclays can be a p.i.t.a if there is to and fro, and in this case it looks like it's still stuck at the initial assessment stage.

If you've found a better deal through a broker, it might be worth considering going ahead with them as they will make sure that chosen lender is compatible with your requirements/circumstances before placing you with them. Good luck!

Thank you so much for a quick reply!! I really appreciate that. 

Sorry to be a pain but do you know if it’ll massively affect our credit score then if we go with another lender via a broker? 

Thanks so much again!

K_S

katierachel said:

K_S said:

@katierachel Unfortunately, Barclays can be a p.i.t.a if there is to and fro, and in this case it looks like it's still stuck at the initial assessment stage.

If you've found a better deal through a broker, it might be worth considering going ahead with them as they will make sure that chosen lender is compatible with your requirements/circumstances before placing you with them. Good luck!

Thank you so much for a quick reply!! I really appreciate that. 

Sorry to be a pain but do you know if it’ll massively affect our credit score then if we go with another lender via a broker? 

Thanks so much again!

@katierachel I can't speak for your specific case (your broker would be best placed to answer) but generally speaking it should not be a huge issue. I get plenty of clients who come to me after a decline and that on its own has never stopped them from getting a mortgage.

mwahahaha

Hi there, was wondering if I could get your opinion on what we do with our current mortgage and the economic situation.

We have a 2 year fixed-rate repayment mortgage, who’s fixed rate will end in 2 phases (as we moved house, ported the mortgage and added a second mortgage product with the same lender last year to borrow the difference on our new house) - product 1’s ERC’s end in June 2023, product 2’s ERC’s end in December 2023.

The plan was… wait until product 1’s ERC’s end in June 2023, then pay the remaining ERC on product 2 (£2k, painful yes, but factored into costs when moving house - always knew this would be the case), then combine the two products into one new mortgage fixed back in for most likely 5 years.

Of course with the economic chaos we’re all in and the BoE upping the base rate at each MPC meeting, it’s got me wondering if we should bite the bullet, pay both ERC’s and re-mortgage sooner rather than later to lock in a lower rate than would be available in 12 months’ time.

Our two current products have different interest rates - the combined average I’d put as 2%. The combined ERC charges today to end both products would be just over £7k (compared to £2k in 12 months’ time).

From initial enquires, 2.5% on a 5 year fix seems achievable now, that would increase our monthly repayments by about £200 - but, could remortgaging now, paying their ERC’s and fixing in for 5 be better for us over 5 years than waiting for the ERC to drop next year and having mortgage rates at say 5% or ? Over the next fixed rate term.

Your thoughts are greatly appreciated, thank you, I’m sure there will be bits I’m missing so another viewpoint is greatly appreciated.