Wife is pregnant, will this affect mortgage application?

housebuyer143

ManuelG said:

kingstreet said:

silvercar said:

kingstreet said:

silvercar said:

MWT said:

TheJP said:

Yes to a degree i agree, but what I'm saying is that the OP will be paying the mortgage likely for 6 months on full salary after the offer is received. It would be different if they were on maternity leave already. They legally don't have to tell the lender they are pregnant, if the lender asks if they have any dependants they don't at this stage. Next time will be different.

The question as asked is a forward-looking question, not asking about their current circumstances, to answer 'no' to that  forward-looking question would be incorrect.

Similarly they are not being asked about the pregnancy, only about what they can reasonably foresee about their financial circumstances, and it is reasonable to say that they can foresee significant changes in the near future...

They can mitigate the reaction to the answer with the details about their savings and their plans for child-care of course...

Your answer is beginning to look like a sexist response. Is any female of child bearing age required to say they may want to take maternity leave in the short-medium term? 

The question applies equally to men as it does to women. A new dependent is a change for anyone who is, or will be, party to the mortgage.

The implication was that anyone contemplating pregnancy should be declaring it to a potential lender. Would the same be expected of a man? 

If there is anything which might increase outgoings or reduce income I would urge a client to allow us to disclose it. If they say no, chances are they would need to look for a new broker. We have anecdotal evidence of clients learning their affordability from us then going elsewhere and being offered more by the same lender. The only possible difference we can see is the omission of a future or current dependent.

Can I just slightly turn the question here? I fully hear you about declaring, and that's not an issue I think - I'd rather declare things than worry about being found out, overall!

However, there's a fair chance my wife might want to go down to four days a week after coming back off maternity leave. I appreciate that means our earning goes down while our expenses go up, so mortgage companies would be less enthusiastic. However... she's not going to talk to her work about that until she has to - and of course work might not allow that anyway! So in any questions on a mortgage form and / or need for letters from employers, how would you play that?

I probably wouldn't go that far, that's a long time in the future and honestly anything can happen. I would just advise of going on maternity in August and leave it at that. Anything else is just speculation.