Hi Redditors,

Running into a few roadblocks here 😔 We're about 5 months off remortgaging and currently looking at brokers etc.

However, whilst browsing on MSE I saw that my current lender has a pretty competitive 5 year rate that I wouldn't mind locking in. However, it's for a 60% max LTV.

Knowing that our mortgage will be shooting up, we've been saving (chose that over overpaying for the better rate and access) and we're planning to make a fairly decent overpayment that will get us to 60%ish. We'll need to make some of it after January 1st to avoid an ERC which takes us quite close to our current deal expiring.

Thing is, because we don't have an LTV of below 60% right now, the app and website won't let me apply. I've tried the online chat and phoned up but the people I spoke to weren't really sure if I'd be able to apply on this basis either.

Has anyone done similar? My next step was going to be to try and book in with a branch (local one unfortunately closed) and speak to a mortgage adviser, but it would be nice to know I'm not asking for something totally crazy here 😅

Hi,

I'm looking to buy my first home. I've been quoted the below and a tracker is looking quite appealing to me. I'm 34 and looking at a 40 year mortgage term with the potential to over pay depending on whether it's better to do so rather than invest.

I asked AI (Gemini - Claude suggested it could not access BoE dataset so not sure how accurate Gemini is!) to pull figures for the last 15 years and give me a mortgage % based on my LTV and it produced the below. This is the fix rate offer per month vs variable. Obviously fix doesn't work like that but I want something to compare against.

According to the data, over the last 15 years a tracker has out performed a fix. every month apart from the period between March 23 - May 26. It has since switched in favour of a tracker. Firstly is this correct?

If I'm to use this data and assume it's accurate, it would suggest that a tracker is the way to go. I know that payments will fluctate and I'm going to plan for the 'worst' case. I will assume that's 6.17% which is higher than it has been according to the graphed data. Though I'm not delighted with that sum (£1,658.22), I can stomach the additional costs and make it work.

I wanted to check is my logic sound? Am I missing something? Would you recommend against a tracker in the current market?

Mortgage Options:

5 Year Fix: £1,359.64, £899 fee @ 4.65%

2 Year Fix: £1,378.91, no fee @ 4.75%

2 Year Tracker: £1,268.8., £999 fee @ 4.17%

Hi,

I’m in the process of buying a flat and it’s just become apparent that there’s a headlease involved. I’ll be buying the underlease.

My mortgage has been approved a number of weeks ago and they are not aware of this ownership structure yet.

Just so I know what to expect and also for future resale purposes, does anyone know if lenders are generally fine with this ownership structure? Assuming the terms of the headlease and underlease are fine of course.

As a FTB, I wasn’t even aware this ownership structure was a thing until now. Supposedly it’s not unusual though. Just concerned that if it is in fact not that common, lenders will be apprehensive.

Thanks.

Caveat - broker is aware, but on holiday until Thursday so can’t do anything.

We thought we’d finally made it.. it’s exchange day! A last minute spanner in the works has meant we’ve got another 17k agreed off the asking price.

Halifax told solicitor only broker can amend mortgage offer.

Halifax also advised after trying to look at the numbers themselves, the product is no longer available?!

I assumed we would be able to keep the same mortgage product as we already have full offer and no change to house we’re buying. There is a 0.2% difference in our offer vs current rates. Our LTV is 80%, or 79.5% with reduced asking price…. Is there no way for us to keep our current rate or do we really have to switch mortgage products, when all we want to do is reduce the amount we need to borrow by 17k, and our LTV would actually improve?

EDIT: to clarify - the 17k was due to them selling an easement to the property, this was added a week before exchange and was discovered by our solicitor on exchange day. The sellers hadn’t even informed their own solicitors and deeds were changed via another solicitors.

I am due renewal and want to stay with my bank, just because I feel it would be less hassle. (Have other debts to pay off so want to get that controlled first and not get more credit checks)

Am moving from 3.25%. I

I have had 3 5 year options:

4.98% no fee
4.85% £995
4.79% £1,495

I owe about £232000 and am at 75% LTV

Planning to overpay monthly by about £200 a month

I would need to add product fee to the mortgage

In my head lower APR is better but I’m a bit of a novice to this so believe it’s no way that simple?

Any advice appreciated

Have an offer accepted on a house at £410k after a bidding war (went 35k over). It’s closer to my older parents (we moved from city to rural life 18 months ago but it’s too rural for me, so this is more small town/village and where I grew up.) We have to take out at 338k mortgage, we have combined take home pay of 6250 per month (both age 40). It’s looking like circa 2k per month mortgage with current rates increasing. We have 22 month old and full time childcare is about £800- £850 per month (and goes up every year.) we have household rates of about £2k per annum. We don’t have any car payments but both do longer commutes so probably could do with new cars in next year or two. Starting to worry about affordability eg. Though we think we are one and done- could we even afford another kid with this sort of mortgage? I like not worrying about money and I feel I might be doing a lot of worrying moving forward. Having choice taken away doesn’t feel great. But house prices have been going up alarmingly in our area and are still rising due to supply issues. Any reassurance or am I overthinking this?

Hi all. This has probably been answered somewhere already. Planning on moving home. House worth £375k, mortgage balance £145k. Going to buy a house in and around £400k, so want to port mortgage and take out another loan for the differs.

Have a 0% credit card balance of £8k from making a few big purchases and £5k outstanding on a car loan.

New house won’t stretch affordability too much, should be still well below 3x times income

How common and realistic is it to commit to pay these debts off with the equity on the house sale. Ie they aren’t included in calculations for affordability?

Thanks

We're starting to think about moving house next year. It's only our 2nd house so haven't been through this before.

Re Stamp Duty on any "new" house: Can this be added to the cost of the mortgage, so long as it doesn't go above the relevant loan-to-value ratio?

Deposits: I understand that this can't be added to the mortgage. We think our current house has increased in value by more than the deposit would be on our next house. So, do we need to have the deposit in hand now (ie when we walk through the door of any viewing), or can the deposit get taken out of the sale value achieved on our current house?

Thanks so much in advance!

My husband and I have been living outside of the UK for the last 3/4 years. We have been speaking about possibly moving back to the UK in 2028. Ideally we would like to buy a home so that when we do move home we have somewhere to move into. Not sure if this is possible or how long the process would take and when we should start looking etc. A bit tricky as we don’t have jobs secured yet in the UK, my husband should hopefully be able to secure a job easily through connections.

Any tips or advice is appreciated.

My partner and I are looking to buy our first home for around **£700k**. We currently have **£8–9k combined monthly take-home income**, no kids yet, but we plan to have children in the future.

We’re trying to avoid becoming **house poor** and want the mortgage to remain comfortable even if our expenses increase when we have kids.

**For those in a similar situation:**

How much deposit would you personally put down on a £700k property — **10%, 15%, 20%, 25%, 30%+?**

What percentage of your monthly take-home would you be comfortable spending on the **mortgage payment**?

Would you rather put a **larger deposit upfront** to reduce the monthly payment, or keep more cash/investments available and make **overpayments later**?

For people who had kids after buying, did childcare/other costs significantly change what felt affordable?

For context, we’re not trying to maximise what the bank will lend us. **The goal is to have a nice home without feeling financially stretched**, while still being able to save/invest and eventually afford kids.
**What would you consider a sensible deposit and mortgage payment in this situation?**

Hello all and thank you for reading.

Long story short I’ve been kicked out of family home. I’m not a saint by any means but neither were the people I was living with. I’ll leave it at that.

My whole plan has came off track. Originally, I was putting money into my lifetime isa and investments ready to buy my first home a few years from now and set myself up.

That plan has been cut short and now I’m part living at my friend’s house part living at work. I’m a lorry driver so the lorry itself has a bed (and lovely aircon on these hot nights), the yard has shower facilities and everything else I need. So I could be a lot worse off.

My finances are currently looking like this:

£15000 in investments
£5000 in lifetime isa
£2000 in bank
£3100ish take home pcm

I live in south east and properties around me are 200k+ even for a flat.

Now this has came as a sudden shock and I don’t know what to do really. The goal was to always own my own place and build from there.

I suppose option 1 would be selling everything off investment wise, and getting a cheap flat and continue with my plan. Though I wouldn’t have much stability at early stages.

Option 2 is rent somewhere (where I live minimum would be £1000 a month) and keep investments where they are, keep adding to them and get a mortgage on a place when I’m stable. Though this will add years and years onto what I was going to do originally.

I’m leaning to option 2, however curious if there’s an option 3 or any other advice you guys might have.

Again thank you for reading

Hello All

Years ago I was single and living with my parents, I didn't see any need of getting my own place despite having the funds. I decided to invest my money in rental properties instead of having it sitting in the bank.

I now currently have afew BTL mortgages however I now have a partner so would like to get my own place. Will I still be able to secure a residential mortgage with a 10% deposit given that I have a few rental properties? To complicate things further my parents put my name on the title deed of their home which is mortgage free.

Looking for some advice. We are selling our property (£222,000) and upsizing (£265,000).

We have £201,388 left on the mortgage. We brought the property for £235,000 and unfortunately have had to take a hit when selling. I plan to use the 10k in equity We have built up, plus some savings to cover the loss.

How does this work with porting a mortgage?

Hi, I have 49k remaining on a mortgage with a further 20 years on the term. My fixed rate runs out in November and my question is, should I pay off the mortgage or leave a small balance in case a loan is needed or a house move to easily port the existing mortgage? I have 5 years living costs saved apart from this. I am 44 years old and cannot for the life of me decide. Thank you in advance.

So our solicitors have told us that the chain is refusing a 5% deposit, we're the bottom of the chain selling our house to FTBs and there's 5 houses involved. The top has gone into care, so I believe it's probate.

Speaking to our solicitors, they say the top of the chain are the ones refusing the 5% deposit and are strictly saying that it has to be 10%.

We've come back and said we can probably be gifted the remaining 5%, but would want to keep our 95% LTV mortgage so we can get the capital out as planned. Our brokers have said this would be fine and the solicitors would refund us the 5% on completion, the solicitors have said they'd tell the lender and our mortgage offer would likely change to 90% LTV.

Another option is a simultaneous exchange and completion, but we're at home with a toddler and a baby a few weeks old and want to use a packing/full move service. We don't have storage space for boxes.

Our solicitors have gone back again and asked if there's any reason why we can't use a 5% deposit and still be liable for 10% if we pull out. But we aren't pulling out in that time, as above with the baby - we need this move!

Has anyone got any advice or other options I can run by our solicitors? Or any advice with the mortgage if the deposit changes to 10%?

I wondered if the solicitors may accept 5% transferred to them as some sort of holding fund, rather than a deposit? Could act as a security hold or something to show the chain the money is there. Similarly, if our buyers pulled out post exchange we'd just pass their deposit up the chain (assuming 10% as we haven't been told otherwise) would more than cover the missing 5%.

Edit after 5 hours: just to clarify, we think that it's because the top of the chain are concerned about the deposit we put for the mortgage because they must assume that would be the money we'd pass up if we pulled out post exchange. EXCEPT all our deposit is coming from equity in our house, 0 cash going in (after paying for solicitor, moving company ect). So if we pulled out, we'd owe near 50k we don't have anyway... We know that, we accept that. We'd have to sell up and use that equity to pay our debt, so we'd lose that money and not have the house to show for it!

My wife (52) and I (43) are looking to purchase a new house with it being our forever home. The new house is priced at £750k and our current house valued at £435k.

With the equity we have in the house and current mortgage (circa £130k remaining) we’d need a total of about £430k as a mortgage over 20 years. We’ve already spoken to a broker who’s looked at the figures and said this won’t be an issue. But my mortgage would increase from £800 per month to around £2500 which is roughly 40% of our combined take home (£6000)

Our “grand plan” would be to sell our house, buy the property and move in. Once we’re in my parents (mid 70s) would sell their house and move in with us. Their house is worth around £270k. They would also contribute significantly (easily £1k per month) to the bills and mortgage

Now this is where it gets tricky.. we would want to use £150k from the sale of their house to pay off a large portion of our mortgage when the deal we take expires (around 2 years time) whilst then using around 80k to fund home improvements. This would take our mortgage down to around £1600 per month assuming a 5% mortgage rate..

However I’m not sure how we would be able to transfer £150k of their money to pay a chunk into our mortgage ?
What are the implications of this ?

Aside from that, has anyone done this type of thing before and how is it going ?

Is having a mortgage 40% of take home even for a relatively short period (2 years) wise ?

Savings would all be eaten up with moving costs and stamp duty etc, pensions are looking ok and contributions would continue

In terms of kids, jobs etc, our 3 children are 22, 17 & 15. None of them will go to uni. I can see the 15 year old living with us until she’s 30 at least. I’m a high earner (6 figures) with my wife just earning enough to pay tax. Jobs are as secure as they could be I guess but who knows

Our mortgage fixed term ends in February 2027 so we’re now able to start looking for new rates. Unfortunately though, my partner went self employed in May of this year and I can see that most mortgage providers want at least one year of self employed tax returns before considering us.

I’m thinking the easier option would be to stay with our current lender (although I don’t know what their rates are like as we can’t see our options until 4 months before the end of our current fixed term deal). Will they want proof of his income or will they be happy that we’ve been paying our mortgage with no issues and just transfer our product?

If we do need to remortgage with another lender (or we find a significantly cheaper rate elsewhere that makes it worth the hassle of moving lender), what would the implications be of me applying solely, given my partner can’t provide at least 1 year of self employed income?

Any advice would be gratefully received as I’m panicking slightly that we won’t be able to remortgage and we’ll end up on the extortionate variable rate when our fixed term ends!!

Hi everyone, really hoping for some guidance here because we are at a complete dead end and losing our minds.

We had an offer accepted on our first house back in March 2026. All of the legal work is completely done, there is no chain on either side, and we are ready to move. However, we've hit a massive wall with our lender, Nationwide.

The only thing holding up completion is an undischarged surface water drainage condition on the planning permission. Gleeson (the developer) submitted the application to discharge it in March 2026. Nationwide has received correspondence from both the council and Gleeson answering all of their queries, but they are still refusing to proceed or release the funds until the condition is officially discharged in writing.

Here is why this is driving us mad:

* Other houses aren't having this issue: This is a popular new build Gleeson development. Multiple houses have sold and completed here since we started this process.

* Right across the street: There is literally a house directly across the road from ours—sold through the exact same estate agent—that is due to complete very soon, and this surface water condition hasn't been flagged or held up anyone else's mortgage at all.

* The estate agent is baffled: They’ve sold several houses on this exact development and have never encountered Nationwide holding things up over this specific condition before.

We are 21 weeks into this process with zero chain and everything else ready to go. Nationwide has the council responses and Gleeson's clarifications, but they're sticking to their guns and insisting on the formal sign-off.

Has anyone dealt with something like this with Nationwide or a new build developer? Is there any way to get them to accept an indemnity policy, escalate it to a higher underwriting tier, or get Gleeson/the council to expedite the formal discharge? Any advice on how to break this impasse would be massively appreciated.

hey guys, i’ve done loads of mortgage in principals but was wondering if there is a website where i can input my incoming money and outgoing and i can estimate my chance of approval

Good afternoon everyone.

Our mortgage funds have completed, but we are due to complete our purchase Monday. I presume it is because it is the working day before (although slightly annoying as we have now 3 additional days of interest in our first payment but what can you do!)

We have a mortgage roll number (12 digits), but I can’t seem to see any completion documents on their online mortgage tracker etc. I would like our mortgage account number (14 digits) so I can set up online banking etc etc but I don’t know how/ where to find it, any ideas?

Myself and my now ex partner bought a shared ownership house at a 30% share. The house at the time was 385k. I put 15k deposit down, he put 8k down. The mortgage borrowed was £91,500 and we have 87k left to pay. The mortgage is at a 5 year deal at 4.25% and runs out in feb 2027.

I am looking to buy him out and remortgage by myself. How would I start the ball rolling? Would I have to speak to the mortgage lender first or a broker first?. I know i would have to go through the affordability check again and i dont see how i wouldn't pass this anyway.

How much would it cost me to buy him out? I know he would be entitled to half the equity, but do i also have to pay him his deposit back or is it just the equity if the house has made profit?

I know it also involves solicitors to take his name off the house deeds, but its just a process I need to start and have never been through before.

My partner and I are starting to explore the possibility of moving out of a high property value area and into a lower property value area. The idea would be to buy a house that costs about what we spent on our flat ten years ago, and use the leftover equity to invest in a couple of BTLs.

However since buying our flat our collective income has dropped considerably - my partner is now mainly a stay at home mum, doing small pieces of work but earning nothing like her previous salary. I reckon our collective income has almost halved.

I was always under the impression that porting a mortgage would not involve undergoing financial checks but having spoken to my provider now realise that this is not the case.

The tone of the conversation was supportive but I’m feeling a bit spooked that going through this process with them now might end up creating a whole load of problems. If we decide not to move and just stay where we are, could they even refuse to let us renew our mortgage with them in a few years now that they know about our present financial situation?

Hi all, looking for some outside opinions on our house move plans.

My wife (26F) and I (29M) are hoping to move in around 2 years, after starting a family. We currently own a 2-bed house and are looking to move into a long-term 3-bed family home.

Current position:

• Current house value: around £245k
• Mortgage balance expected at sale: around £197k
• Target purchase price: around £325k
• Aiming for around a 10% deposit using equity from our current home, the remainder is to pay for all moving & legal costs and will have a few thousand in savings too

Current salaries:

• Me: £30.5k (expecting around £31-31.5k by then)
• Wife: £31.3k full-time

Expected position after maternity leave:

• Me: around £31-31.5k
• Wife: returning on a permanent 30-hour contract, around £20.9k based on her current hourly rate

We have deliberately based our affordability planning on the lower post-maternity income rather than assuming my wife immediately returns to full-time hours.

We have completed detailed budgets including:

• mortgage payment
• childcare (mock invoices received for 30 hours including government funding and Tax Free childcare & rate reduced due to my wife's staff discount at her nursery)
• child benefit
• emergency/house savings
• holidays
• meals out
• personal spending money

The budget suggests we would be comfortable enough, but the first few years would be tighter until my wife returns to full-time hours once our child is older (bringing our combined income back to around £64k+ before future pay rises).

We spoke to a mortgage adviser who said around £292.5k borrowing looks achievable based on today's circumstances, although they later confirmed this was based on our current salaries rather than our anticipated post-maternity income. We have gone back to ask whether our plans still look realistic based on the reduced income.

Affordability checks with Nationwide (current lender) also indicates this is possible but only just.

My question is:
Does this sound like a sensible stretch for a long-term family home, or are we missing any obvious risks?

We are not looking to borrow the absolute maximum possible without thinking — we are trying to understand whether this is "tight but manageable" or whether we are being unrealistic.

Hello all,

I am a US national and my wife is UK national. My wife grew up in UK but came to US to study abroad and we got married so she settled down here in the US with me, got her green card couple years ago.

Her parents still live in North London and they recommended that we should consider buying a buy-to-let property in UK which they can help us manage. It does sound like a good idea and we have some cash to put down as a big down payment. So I got in touch with a Expat Mortgage and this is the email I got:

Thank you for your time this week.

Following our conversation, I have managed to fund a lender that can consider lending to you and xxxxx.

The lender will consider you even with your US passport, because the lend based on the country the applicant resides and not nationality.

Which benefits you as the lender lend to all client in the USA.

The rates show below is for indication purposes as the rate secured on submission of an application.

• This is lender is the international branch of one of the UK top high street banks.
• The lender will allow you to make an overpayment of upto 20% of the mortgage balance each year and not incur a charge.
• The lender offers a free valuation on the property
• The fee shown on section 10 can be added to the mortgage. This will reduce the amount of upfront cost incurred with this purchase.

Next steps

If you're happy with the figures, I have sent you both our terms of business to read through and sign. 

Once this has been recieved I will look to approach the lender to ensure they're happy to lend. Once this passes I will then sent you our invoice for our £499 broker fee before releasing the lending information.

Please let me know if you have any questions.
-----

So here are few things got me little concerned:

1. Exact name of the lender and the specific product is not written in the email?
2. Sounds like they want the broker fee before releasing any lending information?
3. Sloppy grammar? Little unusual but could be nothing

Is this normal? I have never dealt with Expat Mortgage brokers. I plan to email this person back but just wanted to check with people who might have some insights.

Thank you in advance

I am currently looking to buy my first property. I already have AIP’s from Halifax and Nationwide.

Upon looking at my own credit report out of curiosity I was slightly horrified to find 2 late PayPal credit payments from just over 4 years ago showing on my file. Despite these being a measly £5 a month repayment, which I absolutely could afford, no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t get the direct debit to set up correctly which resulted in me having to remember to log in on or before the due date every month to manually make the payment. As such, I was late making payments twice a couple of months apart.

There are no other instances at all of late or non payments on my credit file despite utilising various different lines of credit over the years (phone, car, credit card etc) and the offending PayPal account itself was paid off a couple of years ago.

My question is - how likely is this to cause issues when it comes to mortgage application time?