Planning on buying a house with my girlfriend (50/50)

BBQBossTO

Hi all,

My girlfriend and I are planning to buy our first house together this year; my half will be cash (from the sale of my own house); my girlfriend's half will be a mortgage.

My Girlfriend has a good job with a good salary, so there shouldn't be any "affordability" issues; the main thing she's concerned about is starting a mortgage, aged 48; how do lenders view people starting mortgages in their late 40's?  She also doesn't have a deposit of her own; can I provide the deposit "for" her? Or does the lender view the mortgage only being for 50% of the entire house value, therefore a 50% LTV anyway?

Many thanks for your help.

grumpy_codger

I don't think that age can be a problem, but AFAIK most lenders won't give a sole mortgage on half of a house. They'll want it to be a joint mortgage with both you being  jointly and severally responsible for repaying it.

Mortgages & endowments board is a better place for this question.

SarahB16

Look at 'Tenants in Common' mortgages as that may work for you. You could also both write a will at the same time too. 

_Penny_Dreadful

BBQBossTO said:

Hi all,

My girlfriend and I are planning to buy our first house together this year; my half will be cash (from the sale of my own house); my girlfriend's half will be a mortgage.

My Girlfriend has a good job with a good salary, so there shouldn't be any "affordability" issues; the main thing she's concerned about is starting a mortgage, aged 48; how do lenders view people starting mortgages in their late 40's?  She also doesn't have a deposit of her own; can I provide the deposit "for" her? Or does the lender view the mortgage only being for 50% of the entire house value, therefore a 50% LTV anyway?

Many thanks for your help.

What @grumpy_codger said, your girlfriend is not going to get a mortgage to buy half a house. You’ll need some kind of joint mortgage using your savings as the deposit. You can use a Deed of Trust to set out what will happen in the event of a relationship breakdown including what happens with the deposit. 

ACG

You would both need to go on the mortgage. 
Your money down would be classed as the deposit.
Her age is fine (we did a mortgage last year where one applicant was 50s and the other in their 60s), it might limit the term a little depending on her retirement age but ultimately affordability would be based on both of your incomes and expenditure so should probably be ok from what you have said. 

If you want to protect your deposit, you can either set it up so you have a greater share in the property and change it periodically or you can put a charge on the property for your money - a solicitor/conveyancer can go through those options with you but worth having the discussion upfront - I always think its better to get the not so nice conversations out of the way early on. 

Emmia

SarahB16 said:

Look at 'Tenants in Common' mortgages as that may work for you. You could also both write a will at the same time too. 

I'd say that if you're unmarried a will is even more essential in this situation.

Bigphil1474

We did similar a couple of years ago. We set out the % ownership as I had a smaller deposit but I'm paying 100% of the mortgage. By the time the mortgage is paid off, we will be fairly equal, but if anything happens in the meantime, we know where we stand. We also took out a short period mortgage (14 years) and I'm mid 50's.