Owning your own home

Yes

It's not over the life of the mortgage it's at the point of purchase.
Can you afford this? Yes
Can you afford this if the rate increases by 6%? No

Could most people have bought their homes at the value they did if these rules were in place at the time? Probably not.

There seems to be significant industry fear around future claims of miss selling.

What advice did they give you presubmission?

They told me to go and speak to a guy called Lynx who would give me some excellent hindsight.

With the new mortgage checks, it's less about your salary and more about how you can afford the repayments. You could be on £100k but if your bank account shows £50 lunches a couple of times a week, high childcare costs, ridiculous car payments - then it gets a bit more difficult.

In the most basic terms, they will take your regular outgoings away from your take home and decide if what's left over is enough to make the monthly payments.

It doesn't matter to them that your spending habits might change once you get the mortgage. There is zero humanity in the process.

Trufax...

A mate of mine got refused because he had two £300 payments to the Open University on his statements.
The lender ruled that, despite the fact he was paying for a one off top up professional CPD module, if he decided to do that once a month he would be £7200 a year lighter of pocket and couldn't afford repayments.
Despite all the evidence in the world that this was a completely optional once a year thing they stuck to their guns and said no.
Anecdotal evidence is a kind of evidence.

Was wondering if we could get screwed by bar bills. So we just explain that we're sample testers for Diageo and it all gets reimbursed. Seems legit...

It's not a lifestyle thing as my incoming minus outgoings is making my bank balance rise.

My pension payments seem to be one of the problems.

I'm actually annoyed because I'll get a mortgage, just not at the best rate, which is bloody expensive in the long-run

I was of thinking that LTV affects the rate not out-goings/affordability/credit history; I thought the latter was more about yes/no decision when it comes to getting a mortgage ..

Affordability is hilarious, at 6% interest and after food and bills my disposable income is not enough for some lenders as I they think I cannot live on £50 a day beer and pies money.

Fair cop.

I can make no sense of this

They assumed that because I'd been saving £1500 a month for the deposit that I would continue to want to save at a similar level once I had bought and that this level of saving made a mortgage unaffordable.

Mind blowing innit

Fortunately not all lenders are the same.

Moral of the story, don't save in a savings account, let it build up in your current account and resist the urge to buy stuff.

Retarded logic.

I got my recent mortgage through Halifax, I never had to show my bank accounts or spending. Just a full credit check and my current credit.

IME:

Halifax: good
Coventry BS: good
Santander: Antiquated but good rates so I don't care. (Antiquated as I have to ring up each and every month to tell them that the overpayment I've just made, by standing order, is a capital repayment and not an advance on the following months interest-only payments.)

It's taken me just under a week from having an offer accepted to getting the survey booked in on a property - various small holdups (i.e. First Direct having to post everything to me and me read it before committing). I find out in the meantime that the estate agent has been ringing up my solicitor, trying to get him to initiate searches on a property that hasn't even been surveyed yet, and then asking me to pay him the fee for the searches.

Is this normal?

I found this really helpful when I was going through the process:

http://www.home.co.uk/guides/buying/conveyancing_one.htm#top

Although we got a mortgage sorted before the searches, this does seem to suggest that it can be normal to do it the other way round. But if the survey turns up something that might change your mind about buying it, then you don't want to be paying out for searches more than once I suppose.

More importantly, where abouts in Forest Gate is the place you're negotiating?

Yes, that's normal.

Often it can take weeks to get a surveyor round, especially with tougher mortgage lending, so usual practice is to pay a solicitor to start straight away so the mortgage application and conveyance run concurrently.

It's just as likely you'll want to back out due to searches as survey so there is no logic in doing one before the other.

They're your solicitor, they should be taking instructions from you. I assume the solicitor didn't act on anything the estate agent said other than to come to you. I'd be concerned if that was otherwise.

My lender wanted to know about pension and student loan payments but only wanted to know about my take home pay. They couldn't understand why I was angry about them counting those as a deduction from my take home when I've already paid them out of my salary. Didn't matter in the end but it was stressful nonetheless.

I've had a think about it, and I think yes to running the conveyancing in parallel, but no to paying for both at the same time. The survey results will be done within a week (it's not busy this time of year) and I think I'll hold off spending £300 until I know there's nothing wrong with it.

@tommmmmmm it's off the Romford road next to the Woodgrange estate bit. Where have you bought? I'm trying not to get excited about being so close to the sports facilities i.e. the velopark. Cheers for the link, keeping everything crossed about the survey results next week..

A genuine question, as the planning department are usually quite helpful and give advice on what is allowed and what isn't. Was wondering the advice they gave. You can use them as a free planning consultant, well part of the application fee.

Oh its lynx...names after

@onyerbike just off Woodgrange Road (but on the 'wrong side') minutes away from Wanstead Park Station.

Which means minutes' walk from CoffeE7 and Forest Tavern.

I'd probably do the same in your circumstances.

Oh its lynx...names after

Game Gear or GTFO