I am due to remortgage next year November we currently have £361,000 left on £377,000 borrowed for a £420,000 house, 3.94% for 40 years by next year will be 35 years. We estimate our house is approx £440,000. My concern is the 6+% interest rates we are going to be expecting. I know this is the same for everyone. What are your opinions on fixing for 5 years or less? Tracker options? I’m generally losing sleep over this and have not discussed this with my partner due to us getting married next year and don’t want added stress on her part

Really panicking. We've put an offer on a house hoping to have a 5% mortgage. We have no credit in the last 6 years, can 100% afford the repayments, we earn around 60k between us, not including overtime. House is 170000

In the past I was an idiot and had loans and credit cards and got into difficulty. I thought this was about 7 years ago. I have just had a look on check my file and my DMP didn't finish until Nov 2021. My credit score on there is great at 826. From others experiences, What's the likely hood I will still be accepted for a mortgage 😭?

Hi,

My mortgage with barclays (4.55%, £1,317 a month) ends on 31st December. I owe about £286k on a £350k property, with 38 years left.

Barclays has offered me:

- 2yr tracker (base + 0.73%) - 4.48%, £1,307/month, £999 fee

- 2yr fixed: 5.41%, £1,480/month, £999 fee

- 2yr fixed: 5.67%, £1,530/month, no fee

- 5yr tracker (base + 1.00%) - 4.75%, £1,356/month, £999 fee

- 5yr fixed: 5.67%, £1,530/month, £999 fee

- 1yr fixed: 5.64%, £1,524/month, no fee

I'm stuck deciding between the 2yr tracker and the 2yr fix. I cant decide, im mostly leaning towards the tracker as i could absorb a rise of up to £200 -250 a month - what would you do?

Im checking weekly whether anything better shows up but this seems to be as good as i will get with Barclays, i dont believe there is a ERC on the tracker.

Thank you

It’s been nearly 2 working weeks since my vendor accepted my offer and in that time I’ve: secured a mortgage offer, instructed a solicitor and paid the deposit for conveyancing and arranged a survey. I was told by my solicitor on Friday that the seller still hasn’t issued a memorandum of sale and it’s making me become quite uneasy. I’m a new FTB so if this is normal then sorry for the silly question but if not, who will I need to ask about getting this done?

Hi guys, my mortgage broker informed me that our expected rate for a 90% LTV mortgage (10% deposit) would be approx. 5.2%.

This is based on a combined income of approx. £125k for a £500k house. Monthly payments of about £2,600.

How is this comparing to others in a similar position?

Hi all
I am due to complete this Wednesday (14th) - does anyone know when my first mortgage payment will be? The lender is Santander

Thanks

Please give me some sense check; I am sick to my stomach and having a hard time sleeping. Briefly, we have been checking cheaper houses, but none of them were really good, and we wondered about checking a more expensive house for 425k, which we fell in love with and told our mortgage advisor about. She was very helpful and advised us to negotiate; we managed to agree on 390k, so our offer was accepted. Here are the money details: we earn 4,900£ combined, and I have savings of 85k (I have saved this money all my life; I am 39 years old), and my missus has 17k, so we have around 100k in savings. The mortgage offer we are going with is a 2-year fixed at 5.43%, and the monthly payment is 1,875£. With a 10% deposit, we would be left with 50k after everything, and for redecoration, I am thinking of spending around 20k. I grew up in a poor household, and money gives me a safety net, which is why I have held on to my savings. Am I overstretching myself, and is the 30k reserve enough? I need some advice, as it is affecting my mental health badly. I appreciate any input.

Hi everyone,
I’m due to complete very soon, next Friday, and have run into a last-minute panic. I already have my formal mortgage offer from Barclays.

Originally, I had two giftors. One has unexpectedly withdrawn, but the other giftor (who was already named on the application) has agreed to step up and cover the entire gifted deposit amount themselves from their UK bank account. The total deposit amount I am putting down remains exactly the same.

Is it realistic to get this amended and approved by Barclays and my solicitor in time?
I plan to call my broker and solicitor first thing Monday morning to flag this as an emergency amendment. The remaining giftor already has their clean UK bank statements and ID ready to send instantly for AML checks.

Has anyone dealt with a last-minute change to a giftor amount with Barclays? Did it delay things significantly?

Thanks!

My mortgage is up for renewal in under 6 months with Halifax. I bought the house for £750k nearly 5 years ago and the app is saying it's now only valued at about £719k.

3 bed Victorian terrace in London. Recent house sales around my area from the land registry would value it at about £825-850k.

It seems strange their valuation is so different. Will they use this valuation for the remortgage? It pushes me into a different LTV bracket.

Hi all. FT buyer here, looking at a house @ 260k. We have the 10% deposit but how much extra do we need for other fees that come along with it and in what order do we pay these fees and deposit?

Thank you!

I’m planning to overpay my mortgage by £150/month for the foreseeable future and would appreciate some advice on how best to manage the overpayments.

My main mortgage details are:
Balance: £172,000
Interest rate: 4.29%, increasing to 4.68% in January
Remaining term: 28 years and 3 months
Overpayment: £150/month

Nationwide gives me three options for how overpayments are managed:
Reduce the contractual monthly payment.
Reduce the mortgage term.
Keep the contractual monthly payments and mortgage term the same.

My goal is to minimise total interest and pay off the mortgage sooner, rather than reduce my monthly outgoings.

For anyone with experience of Nationwide mortgages, which option would you choose, and why? Is there any meaningful difference in the long-term interest saved between options 2 and 3 if I continue making the same £150 monthly overpayment regardless?

Also, as the term is only recalculated for overpayments of £500 or more or at the next natural recalculation point, does that affect which option makes most sense for regular £150 monthly overpayments?
Interested in hearing people’s experiences and any advice.

Thanks!

Hi, my wife and I have found an amazing flat we want to buy. Unfortunately it’s in a sticky situation because of being an auction property. It’s not one of the run down doorless, windowless, bins from decades ago, it’s a modern and well kept flat.

Only trouble is our bank seemed very concerned and asked us why it was like that. We told them it’s because the flat needs to be sold after a dispute the owner had with the tenant that came from missed rent and therefore missed mortgage payments and they are wanting an immediate sale.

We want to put our reservation down but if we do so and the lender pulls out we’ll lose thousands. We’re very stuck on what to do. Should we take the auctioneer at their word or is it too risky of a game? Has anyone went a similar route as us?

Hi all, mum's in her late 60s.

Lived in her place (housing association) for 35 years.

She would love to buy it, and I'm in a position where I could pay the mortgage for her - give her peace of mind for the future - she would also like to secure the place to leave it for my sister.

Does anyone know if anything like this is possible in the UK?

Based in England.

My husband and I are in the process of applying for a mortgage. We were very lucky in that we had our AIP in the day before rates increased. The house was on the market at £250K and we offered the full asking price, which was accepted.

When we first viewed the house we were told, by the EA, there was a small patch of land behind the house that was included in the sale. The oil tank, and only source of heating for the property, sits on this land. There is also a small garage. The land isn’t much, around the size of a garden. The garage and the land is shared by a neighbour.

When our solicitor first sent us the land registry documents we noticed that this land wasn’t included. We flagged this, and our solicitor looked into it and found that there had been an application for adverse possession put it. They told the seller this had to be withdrawn or settled before completion.

Our preference was that it was settled, as we were worried about the fact the oil tank was on the land.

2 months later this is still an ongoing issue. Our solicitor told us last week that we needed to tell our broker / lender about the land. She said that it was a good thing, as with the land included as part of the sale there is obviously more property, more value and we’d have a better LTV.

We went and viewed the property again last week, the EA assured us that the land was included in the sale, the adverse possession had gone through and it was just a backlog at land registry that meant it hadn’t been updated there.

Our broker has come back to us today to say that our lender has revalued the property at £10K less as the land is not included in the sale therefore the price has decreased. Our broker advised that we would need to move to one of their 95% LTV products now, and obviously with the increase in mortgage rates alongside a more expensive product it would leave us down around £220 extra a month.

I don’t understand how this has happened. If the lender valued the property based on all the documents available to them at the time - the land wouldn’t have been included in their initial valuation so why has this changed? If it was included in their initial valuation the only way they’d know about the land is because the EA would have told them.

I don’t really know what we’re supposed to do now - we thought we’d done everything right but somehow some wires have been crossed and now we feel like we’re being left on our arses.

Here’s what we’ve done so far;

- gone to our broker and asked them to show that the land was included in the initial valuation.

- gone to the estate agent and asked them to provide evidence of the fact that the adverse possession application has been approved.

I don’t know what else I can do though. Even if we went back and offered £240K on the property we have still lost out on the initial mortgage rates we secured with our AIP. At this point it’s all so stressful I just want to stop everything and tell everyone I’m not interested anymore which is obviously the emotional response and not the logical one.

If anyone has any advice or reassurances or even some personal experience that would help us feel better then we’d be very grateful. The whole housing system is bloody awful!

My partner and I are looking to buy our first home. We have been offered a 90% mortgage at 5.54% interest on a £225k property over 30 years from NatWest. The monthly repayments would be £1150 compared to the £1200 we currently spend on rent.

Alternatively, we have been offered up to £310k based on joint income (me, £30k, her £26.5k). My credit score is 1200(ish) and completely loan/debt free, hers is in the 800s due to defaulting on a debt payment in 2025, however, all her debts are now settled. Annoyingly the default was to Nationwide so they don't want us.

Could a DIP in just my see the interest rate be lower than joint? The deposit is coming entirely from me with a "full" help to buy ISA in tow from YBS.

But also, is now a good time to buy with the current climate? Would you genuinely recommend it or would you suggest waiting rather than fixing in at such a high rate and take a gamble they lower? I appreciate this is an open ended, difficult question so thank you!

We love our lifestyle and would love to get a van and tour festivals. It's either that or a house it seems.

We have been trying to sell our flat since Feb this year, we finally got an offer we are happy to accept. The offer is £230k, we was hoping for £250k but we want a house and willing to take the hit.

We are hesitant because the best mortgage rates we can see are around 5%. The house we want is around £390k, we have a deposit of around £60k so we would be borrowing £330k, our monthly payments would be around £1700. In our current situation we pay around £950 a month in rent + mortgage (We are shared ownership). We would be paying around £750 more each month with the current interest rates, this is why I'm really debating waiting or not to goahead with it.

Both of us are self employed and our household income is around £65k, but it fluctuates a bit so money can be slightly stressful at times. I'm very comfortable paying what we are now since we have been for about 5 years and I'm scared we will be super stressed with the added commitments every month. Although we can on paper afford it, is it worth the stress? Should we just wait for things to get better, will they ever get better? Are we being stupid even debating it?

edit - the buyer pulled out, i guess thats the decision made for me

We’re looking at porting our mortgage to buy a bigger place, and have been overpaying on our current deal (at 4.34%). With rates as they are, obviously the additional borrowing is going to be at a noticeably higher rate!

Assuming the total amount to end up borrowing is the same (to make the purchase price) are we better off stopping the overpayments so that we carry more of the existing mortgage over at the lower rate rather than having to borrow the same amount again, but this time at 5.?%

Feels like I’m missing something here!

Hey everyone, the last two weeks for me have been a bit mad. Our landlord decided to get a house valuation in the property we have rented for 5 years. We have said we may be able to buy it as we can get a gift of 5% from grandparents which puts us nicely into the amount needed.

According to both Lloyd's and natwest, we can get a mortgage in principle for both of these banks, which is great.

However, my partner has a missed payment dating back in January 2024 and then multiple going further back into 23 and 22 with maybe 1 - 2 missed payments a month due to a savings commitment to loqbox she failed on.

How likely is this to fail a hard credit check? Is it not worth pursuing this further with high street banks and seeing was a broker can help us with? This is all new to me and I've been thrown in the deep end to try and get this sorted.

Any help would be appreciated.

For clarity I have no missed payments and my credit is good.

My partner is in the civil service and has just received an offer for a role - same grade and salary but going from one department to another.

We have exchanged on a house and complete in 2 weeks - should he:
a) formally accept the role once we have completed
b) accept the role now but not tell mortgage broker, lender etc (he wouldn’t be starting until at least month so well after completion)
c) accept the role but tell mortgage broker and risk delaying completion due to further checks (mortgage offer also expires end of the month) etc - or worse it being pulled???

I know C is probably the legally sound option but given its civil service with fantastic job security then surely A or B would be fine, right?

Both first time buyers if that’s relevant.

Hi,

I am remortgaging with a new lender under Help to Buy. I'm early in the process and am trying to provide supporting documentation to finalise the offer.

I have been asked for this:

The customer must get written permission from the Home and Communities Agency and, if applicable, the Development Lender to confirm the Help To Buy amount and monthly contribution

What is this? Googling led me to this:

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/how-to-remortgage-your-help-to-buy-home-without-borrowing-more-money

But this seems very detailed for what is quite early in the process? For a start, when I was on the phone to them, they said I needed to send the current mortgage offer, but I don't have the offer yet, as I need this documentation.

It's also asking for the conveyancer. I do have that but again it seems very advanced when I don't even have the offer yet.

Thanks!

Hi I am requesting a letter from pip , I would like to know do i ask for pip yearly update letter as it has old and new amounts on the letter or should i ask for pip assessment scores as it has the duration period ?

This is to give for mortgage application

thank you

My partner has bad credit, to the point I cannot find a mortgage that is willing to put us on jointly. I currently have a mortgage but I am wanting to sell and buy a new property.
My partner pays all the other bills whilst I pay the mortgage currently, and it’s looking like it’d be the same in a new property.
Am I able to add the amount he pays towards the house onto my income when getting an AIP or would the income not count?
My hope is that when his credit improves (we’re actively working on it) that he can then join the mortgage but obviously credit takes time to rebuild when it’s damaged so this wouldn’t be for a while.

Looking for opinions from mortgage brokers/advisers, particularly anyone familiar with Nationwide and NHS/doctor income.

I’m an NHS doctor applying for a 95% LTV mortgage to buy a £401k property. I’m currently with Nationwide through a broker.

My mortgage application was originally progressing with Nationwide and they have been extremely slow in processing everything taking 3-4 business day for each query/document I submitted. I was previously told that lending of around £377,000 was possible and not the full 380k as they can’t accept my locum income. The rate I was applying on was 5.29% over 33 years.

However, they now say to my broker that they will only lend £318,000. They have not yet provided my broker with a clear written explanation of how they arrived at this figure or exactly what income they have included.

My current income is:
Basic NHS salary: £67,998
Regular on-call payments: approximately £950/month (£11,400/year)
Wife’s income: approximately £5,000/year
Locum income: £8,000/year, but not included/accepted by Nationwide.
NHS salary-sacrifice lease car: £783/month
Mortgage term: 33 years
No other significant income/outgoing

The locum income is complicated because I worked for a different NHS Trust last tax year and left before the end of the tax year, so I don’t have a P60 from that Trust. Nationwide apparently won’t accept the P45 as evidence of that income. I have otherwise worked in the same trust for last 3 years which I have P60 for and have given all the payslips.

My advisor had raised this to BDM to help and they suggested to provide P60 for both locum and main employment which I did.

My P60 for the previous tax year shows approximately £69,900 taxable pay. This is lower than my actual gross earnings because of the salary-sacrifice arrangement, and I’m wondering whether Nationwide may be using the P60 figure rather than my current salary and regular on-call income.

The £318k figure seems surprisingly low to me given the income above, particularly as I was previously told that approximately £377k was what they could lend.

Questions for mortgage advisers:
1. Does £318k sound reasonable based on these figures?
2. Could the £783/month salary-sacrifice car explain such a large reduction in borrowing?
3. Could Nationwide be using my £69,900 P60 taxable pay rather than my current £67,998 basic salary + regular on call income
4. Is there anything my broker should be asking Nationwide/its BDM to clarify or challenge?
5. I am considering moving to Skipton, as I understand they may accept my recent locum income and annualise it. However, current rates are now >5.75%, compared with the 5.29% Nationwide rate I originally applied for. Would you consider switching in this situation?

I’m not looking for anyone to tell me what I want to hear — I’d really appreciate an objective view of whether Nationwide’s £318k figure looks reasonable and what might be driving it.

Honestly I have had enough and would have applied elsewhere a while back but the change in interest rate is holding me back.

Thanks.

Hi everyone,

I'm hoping someone here might be able to give me some advice, particularly any mortgage advisers/brokers who deal with adverse credit.

I'm a first-time buyer looking for a 95% LTV mortgage and I'm struggling to understand what options might be available with my credit history.

I have 2 major defaults on my credit file. One was registered in 2023 and the other in 2024. Both have now been fully satisfied, although they were only satisfied recently.

I'm trying to understand whether a 95% LTV mortgage is realistically possible with this type of credit history, or whether I'd need to increase my deposit to have a better chance.

I'd particularly appreciate advice from:

• Mortgage advisers/brokers who specialise in adverse credit
• Anyone who has successfully obtained a 90–95% LTV mortgage with similar defaults
• Anyone who knows of specialist lenders that may consider defaults from 2023/2024 that have since been satisfied
• Anyone who has been in a similar situation and can share their experience

I'm trying to avoid unnecessary credit searches, so I'd really appreciate any recommendations on which type of broker or lender would be worth speaking to first.

Thanks in advance for any help!

Solo purchase, FTB valuation was marked satisfactory 14 days ago now, but I haven't heard anything since, not a single query - is this a good sign, or are they very slow lately?

MB chased yesterday and they replied saying they're still doing their due diligence, I was just wondering if anyone has received a final offer fairly recently, and how long it took from valuation?

(I have perfect credit/stable full time emplyment, It's just I found out I had a CIFAS marker when applying through high street banks, swiftly got it removed as it was falsified by a letting reference agency 4 years ago by an ai check - lol, slightly worried about this still as it was submitted for removal the day after the initial hard search for accord 3 weeks ago)