Amalgamating 2 mortgages into 1

Mr_Frugal

Hi I was wondering if anyone can help with any advise/experience on the following:

My girlfriend and I both bought seperate houses 6 years ago (starting the mortgages within weeks of one another).
Both mortgages are with different lenders. We are now looking at selling both houses and buying a bigger joint house (but potentially with a smaller combined mortgage than the sum of our outstanding mortgages).

What is the easiest way of doing this ?
Do we need to sell each of the houses, pay off the mortgage on each to the lender and then start a new 25yr mortgage on new property ?
Or can we move one/both of mortgages to a given lender (exemption fees accepted) and then amalgamate the 2 into a combined slightly smaller mortgage with only the currrent 19yrs left to run ?

Secondly, what is provision in these instances for one of our houses getting a sale quickly whilst the other remains on the market ?
I have heard of bridging loans but know very little about them other than that they are extremely expensive !
Are they the only option here and if so does anyone know roughly what a bridging loan costs ?

Hope this makes sense......???

Thanks in anticipation,

Mr Frugal.

mountainofdebt

I don't know much about mortgages but I would have thought that as the mortgage is a loan secured on a property, I don't think that you can merge the two mortgages on a third property.....I would imagine that you would have to settle the mortgage before you can sell the property.

I'm curious though why you would want a 25 year mortgage on the new property. Personally when we moved 8 years ago we made a decision not to extend the time that we were going to be paying a mortgage.....so our new mortgage was for 16 years rather than the traditional 25 years. Remember you can have the mortgage over what ever term can be agreed - it doesn't have to be for 25 years!

Don't know much about bridging loans except that they are expensive as well! What might be an option if you sell one property is to rent out the unsold one....although I don't know if your finances would allow the mortgage on the new property and you have to remember that you will need the permission of the mortgage company as well.

debtbuster2K5

Hi,
All you would be doing in essence, would be remortgaging, so essentially there would not be a problem.

However, the best way of doing it would probably be to sell one house at a time, so decide which house you could both live in for a short period of time, sell the other and repay the mortgage on it.

Then you could put the other house on the market and treat it as a "normal" purchase.

There is no need to take out a new 25 year mortgage, as you would pay out more interest than is neccessary, you can set the term of the mortgage at the level you require, so probably best to stick with 19 years.(Or less if you can afford the monthly payments)

Only caveat is that I dont know if you would benefit on any associated fees if you sold both houses together, might need to research that a bit before diving in

Good luck

Mr_Frugal

Thanks guys. Looks like hard work but it'll all be worth it in the end I'm sure. Appreciate the advice.

Mr F.