Self employed- getting a mortgage?

[T & C Tree Services]

Just wondering how people got on with getting a mortgage as a a self employed arb? Me and the Missus are going to start looking into it and thought I might start a thread for people in a similar situation or people who have succeeded in getting a mortgage to give some tips on best lenders etc etc?

[Rupe]

Good luck!

 

You will need three years of accounts showing income, but of course our income is always shown to be as small as possible (i.e. we claim as much as poss as expenditure) for tax, for a mortgage you need it to be as high as possible.

 

Then you will need a higher than normal deposit, not sure hwo high, it depends on the lenders but it wasnt that long ago that they were asking around 30%.

 

I bought my house will I was on a wage, and got it through northern rock in the late 90's when they didnt wask any questions!! I remortaged when self employed using the self assessment method, again that was in the days when they didnt ask any questions!

 

I doubt I could even get a mortgage now to buy the house I already own at the price I paid for it in '99 !!

[defenderjack]

i was going through this a month ago and it helps if one of you are employed ,but as rupe says its just one big pain in the aris nowadays !

[T & C Tree Services]

i was going through this a month ago and it helps if one of you are employed ,but as rupe says its just one big pain in the aris nowadays !

 

Who Did you go through Jack?

[RobRainford]

I can't even get £5k for a car over 5 years! Wouldn't want to try getting a mortgage!

[Pedroski]

I can't begin to imagine how it would be possible now. I was in full time employment on about £16k per year when I got my mortgage for £80k. Two weeks later I handed my notice in and started at uni and became self-employed. If I was trying to buy my house now then I'd be looking for a £300k mortgage with an income of £12k! Don't think it would happen. I've only got £65k left on the mortgage and I'm after borrowing £50k from the bank to complete a large home extension, but am too scared to approach them about it!

 

Your best hope is if you can get someone to act as a guarantor, but that basically means they are putting their home at risk as well.

[Gareth Dalzell]

Just wondering how people got on with getting a mortgage as a a self employed arb? Me and the Missus are going to start looking into it and thought I might start a thread for people in a similar situation or people who have succeeded in getting a mortgage to give some tips on best lenders etc etc?

 

Our mortgage was thru the bank we use for the business. they knew all our history and were able to make a more informed decision about our ability to repay.

[Rich Rule]

I did it 2 years ago.

 

If one of you are Employed then get them to be the principle.

 

Avoid Abbey/Santander like the plague. Biggest load of wasters out there. Had me jumping through hoops for 4 months only to nearly lose us the sale when they refused to offer what they had done originally.

 

Settled with RBS in the end but put down nearly a 40k deposit. 35 % IIRC.

 

Speak to various mortgage conveyancers / financial advisers and Good luck.

[Chris Sheppard]

We bought our first house around 6 months ago and found RBS to be very helpful. Mrs is employed and also banks with RBS so that helped a fair bit too. They didn't really look too much into my earnings, other than bank statements going back a few months.

 

They could also see that we'd been paying a similar amount each month in rent as we would be on the mortgage and that seemed to help too.

 

We had to find 10% as deposit but at a reasonably hih interest rate, though e've fixed it for 5 years which would mean that based on how our rent had previously gone up each time, we would be paying a fair bit less each month than what the rent would have ended up. Hope that makes more sense than it sounds reading it back

[Rupe]

I dont want to depress anyone but in the late 90's northern rock were doing 110% mortgages, no wonder we got in so much trouble.

 

All you needed was a salary which when multiplied by 3.5 equalled (or greater) the value of the house you were buying, then a 10% deposit.

 

As soon as you actually bought the house you got the 10% deposit back plus another 10% taking the value of your mortgage to 110% of the property and most likely above 3.5 times your income (definatly in my case)

 

So, of course many poeple defaulted, hence the crash and northern rock leading the crash. I have hung on ok, but couldnt buy another house if I wanted to move.

 

The other funny thing was that I borrowed the 10% deposit from the bank with 2 months deferred payments, and paid it all back within the two months so only paid them about £60 in fees IIRC !!