Well it seems that's come to an end The building society has told us that they will only give us an 85% ltv depsite them saying that it wouldn't be a problem and that they would lend us between £250k and £400k. The estate agent then phoned and told us that the owners have found a house they want to buy and do we want to change our offer (well of course not as it seems they now have a reason to sell quickly and by the sounds of it no higher offer) but we can't afford the extra 5% deposit. Annoyingly the building society knows this as they know how much we have in savings. So, if someone wants to give us 5-7k that'd be fab... don't all speak at once now!
95% mortgages ARE available, albeit at a higher interest rate, have you looked around on the various comparison websites etc? Even if you can get a mortgage, don't increase your offer as (as you say) the sellers are now even more desperate to sell than they were before, so it's bizarre to expect a higher offer. What interest rate are you offering for the extra 5k you need.............................?
We could probably get on a Help to Buy with a really sh1tty interest rate (although they didn't mention it) but we have a 12% deposit so I thought over 10% would be ok - apparently not!
Hee hee, so you did! As BFC Dave says, have you looked at the Help to Buy scheme? The shared equity part of it only applies to new builds, but there's a mortgage guarantee scheme which helps people who are struggling with LTV. It doesn't directly help you but it might allow you to get a higher LTV mortgage. I'm sure you've looked into all avenues though.
If you dont ask you dont get. Start low and dont worry about them thinking your being cheeky etc, you probably wont ever see them again anyway. .
Loads of 90% mortgages about so that should you should be fine. Having 12% deposit won't improve the interest rate though, that'll only change once you hit 15% deposit. You're probably better just using 10% and keeping the 2% to spend on the house or as contingency. I'm sure you know this but decide what you think you can afford, not what they'll lend you. Even the really conservative lenders will offer you ridiculous amounts of money.
Thanks The 12% is outside of money put aside for fees/stamp duty/new furniture/couple of months worth to live by etc. We could go to the 15% if we spent pretty much everything we have but we know better than to even consider that.
Best of luck with it, always be cautious and never underestimate how much even the most well-maintained of houses end up costing when you first move in. I've still not recovered from the price of curtains and blinds!
New update. After being refused a 10% deposit by the building society me and the hubby decided to check our credit reports. His is excellent and mine is 'fair' and is the reason that we are not being automatically accepted for a mortgage in principle anywhere. I have no credit history at all (!) which I was aware of as I've never had credit for anything in my life. There's not much I can do about that quickly but what I am annoyed about is that they only have me down as living at my address since December as that is when I updated my name to my married one. It now flags up as poor in that area as I've only been living there a few months when really I have been in this house and registered to vote for 6 years! I know that when they run both my names it shows that I've been registered in my old name for 5 years but it has still affected my credit rating. It looks like we are screwed completely now wherever we try.
Go see a mortgage broker and let them do all the work, I've never had credit and have no rating, and really struggled for a mortgage, went and saw a broker and they sorted us out no problem
would agree with that - when we last bought 2 years ago we kept our old house but only had a few years left on it so didnt really want to get a buy to let, plus also we wanted to rent it out to family which most buy to lets don't allow because of the complication of family ties if they start to default. So we went to a broker and they found one of the very few lenders that allowed us to both keep both residential mortgages. Thats what they are there for.