When should we apply for a mortgage?

Drummer1991

My fiancé and I currently live in a flat that I own (£113,995 new build with 10% deposit and roughly £420 per month, 30yr mortgage on 5yr fixed rate, due for renewal mid-2023) and no mortgage payments have been missed or underpaid. We’re getting married next August and going on a month long honeymoon soon after. The total cost of the wedding and honeymoon is circa £30k with various large payments leaving my bank over the next year, and then a month of high money turnover in September / October for the Honeymoon. We’re saving for the wedding and have gifts from parents, so none of the wedding or honeymoon is being done on credit.

My current credit score is good / excellent – any finance agreements I have, have always been 0% and paid over the term with no missed payments. I have a sofa 0% finance which is due to end November 2022 and a 3yr bed 0% finance which is due to start next month. My fiancé has a phone 0% finance which will end in April 2022.

In terms of credit cards, I have 2 with a total of c.£16k credit limit and my fiancé has one credit card with a £200 limit. We pay the cards off each month rarely use any more than 5-10% of our credit usage. My credit rating is good to excellent, my fiancé’s is poor because she’s just started to build it – no missed payments etc, just takes time to build. We’re both on the electoral role at the same address and have a joint bank account, so we’re ‘financially linked’.

We’re looking to buy a house soon after the wedding and honeymoon. I will have the money from the sale of my current flat to help with the deposit, and my fiancé has a help to buy ISA which should be at around £7k by the wedding. We’re both full time civil servants and our total income is around £60k pa.

My questions are: is there anything else we should be doing to increase our mortgage chances; and when is the best time to apply? Should we wait until 3 months after the wedding, to avoid bank statements showing lots of money going out, or would banks take this into consideration as a special ‘life event’? 

kingstreet

Lenders won't be interested in one-off expenses.

Apply for a mortgage when you need one. When you agree to sell your property and agree a price for the next one.