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Hello, I switched to a new 5 yr deal amidst the panic 2 weeks ago. That evening my bank, NatWest, duly put all the rates up significantly…so it felt like a good move…our current fixed rate doesn’t end until March, so I wanted to make sure we didn’t lose the deals on offer with our existing lender, which beat all the rest. however, as my current mortgage doesn’t end until March do I still have the right to switch again if interest rates change or other deals become available? Or Am I completely locked in already? thanks for your help.

I am currently looking at my first investment and considering off-plan The unit is very nearly finished. How is the exchange payment/deposit paid? Do I need to have that cash spare or can it be paid from my mortgage? Would appreciate any help!

Can anyone help....we're about to exchange on a listed building, I noted a while back that UPVC windows had been fitted a long time back and the doors are composite UPVC and I'd estimate approx 5 years old. Both windows and doors look fine and suit the house however the council has confirmed no permission has been obtained. They also said on this occasion they wouldn't seek to take enforcement action. So thats great and puts my mind at rest but we are purchasing using funds from a further advance on our residence with a view to remortgaging in 6 months. My worry is that a lender might not lend if the valuer picks up on the listed building status and the fact there is no permission for recent(ish) works. Am I right to be concerned? Last thing i need is to be stuck with an unmortgagable property and be unable to get any money back out or sell! I'm thinking worst case scenario we would have to get consent which would involve replacing windows and perhaps the doors and probably cost in the region on £10k. That would pretty much wipe out any uplift in value and make the deal nonviable not to mention the time and disruption. Im hoping Im worrying over nothing but if not I fear we would need to (very reluctantly) ask for a reduction in price or walk away. I'd hate to do that due to time and money already spent and I'd hate to do that to the vendor but we need to cover ourselves. TIA

Our family home has an interest-only mortgage secured on it. The mortgage terms allow us to transfer the debt to another "suitable property" with no penalty if we move house. Would I be right in assuming that the lender would insist on performing another mortgage payment affordability check for the new property? I ask because I intend to semi-retire after the house move and I might not have enough income to satisfy the lender's affordability criteria, even though I would in practise be able to afford it. Thanks.

It's no secret that leveraged property investment has been very lucrative in recent decades, but people have been made bankrupt as well, especially in 2008. I'm trying to get to grips with how people with larger portfolios sleep at night with lots of mortgage debt to their name. Let's say I have one Buy-To-Let worth £200k with £150k debt against it and it's held in an SPV with a 20% personal guarantee (PG). The most I can lose personally is 20% of debt, so £30k. This isn't too scary, unless I've spent all my money it probably won't bankrupt me and it's not an insurmountable amount of money to rebuild. Anyone hoping to grow big though is going to one day end up with much more debt than this, perhaps they will end up with 20 of the same property, worth a total of £4M with £3M debt and the same 20% PG. Now they are personally liable for up to £600k! That's a much scarier amount. I can think of a few ways investors might justify these risks and I'd be interested to get your thoughts. A) prices will never fall more than 25% and so negative equity will never occur, and if the property needs remortaging at this price (which won't be possible without putting new money in because of the new value) then it can be easily sold to cover the debt. B ) before prices get anywhere near dropping by 25%, the government will step in to support the housing market C) The investor has sufficient other assets to cover any insolvency in their property portfolio I get the impression that a lot of people are either not thinking about this risk or thinking of A and B. In my eyes at the moment, only C is really that safe. If the properties are held personally or with a larger PG, then much more is at risk. As an investor grows their portfolio, they might be under the impression that they are unstoppable, but if they keep up a mortgage LTV of 75% across their portfolio, they are no more safe against bankruptcy than someone with a single property, and in fact have more to lose. Please let me know what you think, do you have a way to mitigate against these risks? Am I missing something? Thanks

Hello everybody, I'm Jade and I am looking to buy the property that I currently live in with my parents as the only name on the mortgage given that my parents are both unemployed. I am currently a university student in my final year and work 22.5 hours part-time at the moment (annual income 18,500). My dad owns a property that we would sell to finance the sale of the property we want to buy that is valued at 135000 and we have a sum of 40000 savings. I want to apply for a mortgage of around 25000 given that the house we want to buy is estimated at approximately 200000. My parents have no experience or knowledge in buying or selling property and the situation that I find myself in is one that I have very little understanding of. Can anybody offer any help, support or guidance on this? Is my mortgage application likely to be declined or approved? How likely is it that I can buy the property? Many thanks in advance, Jade-S.

I am thinking of taking 20% Equity loan, 10% Deposit and 70% mortgage to purchase the property of 510K in London. I came to the choice between 2 years deal or 5 years deal now. I would like to clear the equity loan asap and I will make extra cash to pay off some of the equity loan in a few years. With 2 years deal, I will pay off all the equity loan with cash contribution and incorporating the rest into remortgage at the end of 2 years. In doing so, I can possibly pay off the loan before the property price goes up too high. However there is a risk of interest rate increase in coming years so taking 5 years deal now with relatively low interest rate could be an option too. With 5 years deal, I can secure the good-ish interest rate and I can make 10% equity loan repayment at some point within a few years. After 5 years I will take the other half of 10% equity loan into remortgage. The risk here is that in 5 years time, if the property price goes up the repayment portion of equity loan could increase as well. My question here is whether I focus on equity loan repayment asap (with the fear of property price goes up) or securing the good interest rate product for 5 years(with the risk of interest rate going up). Thanks for your advice!!

Hi Hub, Currently seeking views on the best approach to buy a farm property. We want to talk to financial advisors but wanted to scope out any particular challenges/opportunities on here first. We have two properties to sell which should release approx £400k to go into a farm property (after CGT), however the purchase costs of suitable properties are significantly higher - greater than £1m. Any views on how to go about getting a mortgage for this amount? Personal vs commercial mortgages? Other options out there? Any thoughts much appreciated as don't know where to start with this... Thanks!

While it seems common place to refinance properties owned in an SPV and use the proceeds to fund the deposit on further properties, what options are there to access that equity if one doesn't want to grow there property portfolio any further..? Since equity released by refinancing is not a profit, I imagine it is therefore impossible to extract the equity through dividends - one would instead have to sell a property and record a profit?? This seems like a significant drawback to me compared to owning property in my own name, considering that I don't intend to just forever buy more and more property... (but might want to buy enough to otherwise make an SPV worthwhile..) Looking forward to hearing what people have to say on this. Thanks in advance!

Hi All, Apologies if this has been previously asked and answered, I was unable to find any such situation so thought I'll ask away. Thank you in advance for reading through and all your advice. Okay so I have this odd situation, thought I'll get some opinion, so here goes, So when applying for mortgage, I gave the address of the property (that I got from RoyalMail PostCode finder). The property was assessed and mortgage was approved. Now when after going through all the legalities and getting to the point of Signing the Contract ... the Contract papers I've received, the address is somewhat the same, same House No, Street Name and PostCode, just the locality name is different. When I use both addresses on GoogleMaps, the both point to the same direction (obviously as it;s same House No. Street Name and PostCode). An example would be something like this, Mortgage Application Address: 23, Woods Street, Patchway, Bristol - BS34 5GZ Contract Document Address: 23, Woods Street, Charlton Hayes, Bristol - BS34 5GZ So my question is, Can the Mortgage Lender withdraw it's offer or anything like that could happen! Now I'm filling up the Mortgage Deed and Not really sure if I should continue with the Address that I provided at time of Mortgage Application or should I use the one on the Actual Contract document ... or should I completely remove the locality and just write Street Name and then City Name ... Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I’d like to start a conversation about macro-economics and the effects that it might have on property investing. In particular, I’m going to challenge the notion that house prices always go up and highlight that the price rises which have been enjoyed by property investors for the past generation have been largely due to the steady decline in interest rates. Ultimately I’d like to find clarity on the question of whether property investment is still a good idea today and if so then is the same formula that worked previously still the best approach. I’ve tried to research this topic thoroughly but please do disagree with me and offer alternative ideas. What I say relates mostly to buy-to-let (BTL) investments that involve a mortgage. A) Let’s start with some fundamentals: property investors generate profit from two sources: rental income and capital growth. With rental yields where they are today (around 4-6% gross) it typically works out that the rental income is similar to the running cost of the property, and so the investor relies on capital growth to actually make profit. If you knew house prices were going to stay still for the next 30 years, would you still be interesting in BTL? B ) Having established that capital growth is important, let’s examine what causes it. For people to pay more for houses they have to be able to afford to pay more and this generally means one of two things: either they are earning more (wage growth) or they can access cheaper mortgages (interest rates falling). Rob & Rob have often talked about affordability on their podcast and explain how it’s this combination of wage and interest rate that determines what people can pay, not just how much they earn. Interest rates have been falling reasonably steadily now for several decades, meaning that year on year buyers have been able to afford bigger mortgages, pushing up house prices. This is demonstrated by the fact that, over this time, the house price-to-income ratio has increased substantially but the mortgage payment-to-income ratio has been relatively unchanged. A research paper by Victoria Monro of the Bank of England [1] estimated that over the past three decades about half of the housing price growth was due to wage growth and the rest due to falling interest rates. Therefore, if interest rates had not fallen, we would have seen half the price growth over the past three decades. C) So what happens next? Assuming interest rates will not go negative, two things can happen: either rates stay low or rates go up, and surely they will eventually go up. This means that investors will be relying on wage growth alone to push property prices higher and when rates do rise this will have an opposing effect as buyers are faced with higher mortgage payments. If rates slowly rise over the three decades back to the point they were 30 years ago, might we expect the roughly equal contributions of interest rate changes and wage growth to cancel out and house prices stay flat. D) Does this present risk to property investors? I’d really like to hear some opinions from you all. In my eyes there are some significant risks: If I were to purchase a BTL today and house prices stay flat, I might make a small or zero profit on the rental income. But this scenario is likely to occur as a result of interest rate rises, in which case my costs are going to go up and I could find myself in a scenario where I’m making a loss each year on running the property and there are no price rises to bail me out. If rates rise especially fast then house prices could even go down, but I’d be surprised if central banks would allow this to a significant extent. Any thoughts? E) Is there a particular strategy that could be safer? Please do make some suggestions. I for one have been wondering whether the era of capital growth is coming to and end and instead investors should be seeking to maximise rental income rather than capital growth. This would sustain a larger proportion of returns when the growth stops and give a stronger cushion as interest rates rise and increase the mortgage payments. Conclusion I’m proposing that rising interest rates over the coming years are likely to counter the effects of inflation and leave house prices standing still. This means that property investors no longer be able to rely on capital growth as part of their strategy. Furthermore, investors face a risk that their portfolios will no longer be viable with higher mortgage payments. Contrary to popular recommendation, higher income (lower capital growth potential) investments might be a safer bet for the next generation of investors. Ultimately, the central banks have control of the interest rate lever, will their decisions be likely to help or hinder investors? But what about the 18 Year Property Cycle?!? Aren’t we entering the boom phase?? Well I’ll be honest, I’m not sure I believe in the 18 year property cycle... it’s often easy to pick out a pattern when you go looking for one, that doesn’t mean it means anything. Perhaps the 18 year cycle has some validity resulting from human psychology and it certainly seems like people are expecting house prices to go up right now. But I believe there are larger forces at play – these people need to be able to afford it at the end of the day. We might see some more growth still, I’m not predicting a crash; new 95% mortgages could push the market a bit higher still as could wage growth. But otherwise the economic levers that inflate house prices don’t go any further, and eventually will start going back the other way. This won’t necessarily result in prices going down, if central banks decide to avoid that. But it could mean prices staying flat and costs going up, potentially rendering traditional BTL strategies unviable. Please feel free to agree, disagree and generally offer your thoughts on these fundamental issues. [1] Read abstract and see Table 3 from https://www.economic-policy.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/9100_UK-House-Prices-and-Decline-in-Risk-Free-Real-Interest.pdf

Hi everyone- some help, advice and reassurance please! My partner and I (first time buyers) have put an offer in on a house. We have got a mortgage in principle from Barclays for £152k based on having a 5% deposit of £8k for a £160k purchase. If our offer is accepted by the seller, then obviously we need to get started on a mortgage application. We are both in steady, permanent employment- I am a teacher earning £25,373 per year and he is a customer service advisor earning £17,500 per year plus bonuses. My only concern is that up until last month, I was living in my arranged, fee-free overdraft. I have never exceeded the arranged overdraft limit. I have just paid this off in full using savings. Other than this, I have never been charged fees on my account, neither of us have ever missed a direct debit payment, and we both have good credit scores. Will this recently used overdraft be a problem? As mentioned, it is now paid off in full, we have our deposit ready in a Lifetime ISA and I have just been paid so have a full wage in my bank account. Thank you!

Hi all, I am scaling up my property investment portfolio. I have applied for 5 mortgage applications alone this year. This is taking a toll on my credit score, essentially halving my score to how it was at the start of 2020. The plan is to continue scaling up, potentially 2 mortgage applications planned for next year 2021. My question is; How do other investors deal with this situation with regards to hard searches affecting your credit score? Am I being too ambitious? Regards, Craig.

Hi, Wondering if anyone here has had a similar experience or can help. We purchased a newly converted flat in Leeds a couple of years ago and at the time got a mortgage on it fine without any issues. As we have come to re-mortgage time, we just received an rejection from The Mortgage Works as the surveyor noted the following: "The property lies adjacent commercial premises(mainly low value storage/warehousing and light industrial/manufacturing) on all sides , in an area which does not have a "residential feel". Vehicular access is gained solely via a "commercial "area. The property is not acceptable in accordance with the Lenders guidance." The flat has been rented to young professionals with no down time in the two years since completion so no issues with demand. The flat is a converted office block so the area is fairly industrial/commercial but there is redevelopment going on (part of the reason we bought it) with a brand new hotel on the same road and a brand new block of converted houses/flats directly opposite. Our existing broker has spoken to a few lenders that have similar lenders guidance so said it's potentially risky as they will charge a valuation fee and we might not meet the criteria so would lose on the fees. Our existing lender doesn't have any product transfer options so we would have to apply for a new mortgage. We are currently investigating this option but just wondered if anyone has experience in this area and might know a broker that could help or a lender that could be suitable? Thanks!! Sam

Hi. I am a British expat living in Dubai and I’m looking to buy a retirement property for my grandmother to live in but I’m struggling to get a mortgage - not had any positive feedback from my broker yet! I am told the key factors are the following: The property I’ve found is only £90k It’s a retirement home I’m an expat Its in Scotland and the rules are different for retirement homes Any advice or suggested lenders would be welcomed. Not sure if I’m best going for residential or BTL. Thanks in advance

Hi, I am thinking of structuring some BTL investments in a UK Ltd company in which one or more shareholder would be an ex-pat and one or more shareholder would be a UK resident. If this was the case and we wanted to apply for a mortgage then which should it be - an ex-part mortgage or a Ltd company mortgage? I am hoping it would be possible for a company like like this to apply for a Ltd company mortgage. Or would there be more advantages to an ex-pat mortgage anyway? I assuming that it is the status of the shareholders that would be germane to this, but also wondering if, in fact, it is the status of the directors that matters? Thanks in advance.

I am a novice property investor at the ripe old age of 56 and I currently own 2 buy-to-let's and 1 residential property. Seeing an opportunity, I really want my 19 year old son to get into property with my support and start to earn an income and become independent on his own. Sadly, he recently left school and is still unemployed. That said, I am trying to find out about mortgage opportunities for him but he does not own a residential property as he still lives at home. Is this really a no-goer or does anyone have any advice on how to go about this please?

Hi so my plan was to quit my job because i had no time to look for property deals and so I could invest in BTL properties with the capital I have saved. Possibly doing some vanilla BTL and some BRRR which could give me rental income to do what I actually want to do. The problem i'm having is finding a mortgage lender which will give me a good interest rate. ATM I have been offered 4.5% for using my shares and investments as possible income, as oppose to 3% if I had a £25k+ salary. Could doing a JV work? Where we split interest costs and capital growth at the end. The mortgage broker got back to me saying the JV partner would need to be a shareholder. So my question is if they are my shareholder with minimal shares, when I refinance the property using their income for affordability in terms of lending, How would the money pass to my JV partner wouldn't it be quite heavily taxed as a salary or does anyone know? Also I'm pretty new to property but would like to invest in the north possibly liverpool, nottingham. It'd be great to be able to work with someone with experience in property investing. If anyone needs an investor?

Hello, i was wondering if anyone could help me? I own unencumbered at flat worth 83k in a ltd company which is leesehold and ex council.it's in a great location and yeilding well. I'd like to release the equity to invest however have been rejected by two seperate mortgage lenders - keystone and foundation homes both times because there's not enough 'owner occupiers' in the area... basically the council own too many. I was wondering if anyone has any ideas to help me? I think i need some inovative out of the box ideas to try here! Cheers Laurence

Hi all, Has anybody ever had a BTL mortgage on a non standard construction house? I'm looking at a Wimpy No Fine house in my area and I really like it but my broker tells me that in her 12 years she has never processed a BTL mortgage on a non standard construction. Is this true? I thought about moving in myself for a few months and then looking to gain consent to let at some point but I'm concerned about being on variable rate with consent to let as if I couldn't obtain a BTL at a later point. PLEASE ADVISE IF YOU CAN AS IM DEEP INTO NEGOTIATIONS AND DEBATING PULLING OUT

Hi all, I hope you guys can help with this…any advise would be very much appreciated. We have applied for a residential mortgage with Santander through a mortgage advisor. We were expecting no issues and our advisor was very confident that we should not encounter any problem. The application initially went smoothly and no issues were flagged with affordability nor credit score nor valuation of the property we would like to purchase. However, during full underwriter review we had a push back. We have been told that since at Company House I am the only director of the limited company that employs me I should be applying as self-employed. This doesn’t make sense to me as I own less than 20% shareholding in the company (in fact I don’t directly own any share in it…see below for more details) and I only receive a salary through PAYE, no dividends nor other types of remuneration. Why would they even mention that? According to their policy the only criteria that should make an employee go down the self-employed route is if the applicant is a director AND owns more than 20% shareholding, which is not my case. Maybe they just made a mistake (or rather wrong assumption)? And if so, how can we get the underwriter to change their assessment? More details… The company that employs me is a wholly owned subsidiary of another company (a parent company), in which I am director and I own a shareholding, but less than 20%. I should hopefully have more information soon but it seems that the underwriter also raised concern on my company (the wholly owned subsidiary) performances. Firstly, should an underwriter even consider my company performance given that, based on their own policy (see above), I am to be considered as simply employed? Also, the actual reality is that it is the parent company who pays my salary and it is responsible for my salary and in general to keep the subsidiaries running and manage the finances of the group. The last account on Company House of the subsidiary shows liabilities exceeding assets (maybe that’s what they looked at?) but the balance sheet of the parent company looks healthy. I have been told that having my company's accountant (which is the same for both subsidiary and parent company) write a letter clarifying that I am an employee and I don’t hold more than 20% shareholding and that my direct employer (as for payslip) is actually a wholly owned subsidiary should help. We have also been thinking whether it makes sense to add some sort of comfort statement in which it is said that the parent company has been supporting the subsidiary and the board of directors of the group intend to do so for the foreseeable future. I can also try to get the directors of the top company to write up something but not sure whether that would help at all. Do you guys agree? What do you think the accountant letter should say exactly? Is there anything else you guys would advise? Thank you!

Hi all, This is my first post and I hope someone can help! My gf and I is looking to buy our first BTL property under a limited company and I understand that we will need to do personal guarantees against the mortgage (which is fine). We both have our own residential mortgages , however, she has a help to buy equity loan on hers. I understand that with HTB you can’t own another property until you have paid off your existing equity loan (or sell the property) . Is this also the case if the property is purchased under an ltd company as it is a separate entity? Many thanks in advance, Jordan

Hi, any insights would be much appreciated on the following: I am looking to buy a property which is being sold as 2 flats (a 2 story house has been split over 2 floors) each with it's own private entrance - according to the details I would be buying the freehold and own the whole property I could either keep it as flats or turn it back into one house. 1. Would I be able to get a residential mortgage on the property? 2. Would I be able to keep it as flats, have one flat as my primary residence and rent out the other one? All whilst staying on the resi mortgage? 3. If I wanted to sell each of the flats individually at a later date would I need to convert them to leasehold? Thanks in advance Lewis

Hi everyone, I am in the process of purchasing 25% of a shared ownership flat and 2 of my mortgages applications (barclays and halifax) have now been declined for the same reasons : "they won't lend on the property as its an investment-led development property - It appears lenders are not liking the property due to the surrounding of the property and the development appears to be aimed at investors" Could someone explain to me why is this a problem for the lenders? surely that will not affect my capacity to repay my mortgage, and being a shared ownership, i would have thought the "small" amount = low risk for them? I am starting to wonder - if i eventually find a lender - am i shooting myself in the foot? the plan is to live there a few years and then resale, does this mean i will potentially struggle ? Thanks for your help in advance LDi

Hi All, New to the forum and looking for some insight into what my chances may be of securing a btl mortgage in limited time, So to cut a long story short, I have purchased a flat in auction just on Friday 28/2/21, yes I know it's crazy but I haven't physically seen it. I was outbid on the actual auction, however it didn't meet the reserve so didn't sell. A week later I get a call, it's still available and being offered to me below the reserve before it's back in auction a week later, I make a lowball offer which was refused, I then offer to meet half way to the sellers asking price and I would make a deal today (Friday). A couple hours later I get a call and the seller has accepted! It's local, I know the area and market value, and it's got enough of a margin to cover potential issues, although I'm confident it's a straightforward renovation (new bathroom, kitchen decoration, possibly new boiler), so I FOMO'd and paid the deposit to secure it without viewing, and yes I studied the legal pack and all is good. To cut to the chase it will be a buy-to-let investment, and it is still sold under auction conditions with a 6 week completion date, and my intention is to renovate to a good standard before letting. I want to try to secure a buy-to-let mortgage in time to avoid extra costs of bridge loan. The property does look to be in 'habitable condition' , but my question is is it in 'lettable' condition? The only hurdle I can see that could delay the mortgage application is if the survey may regard it as not in 'lettable' condition before renovation. I know the property was being lived in by the owner/occupiers until recently, from the pictures it obviously needs renovating/modernising, but assuming it has a working kitchen, bathroom, electrics, heating and no holes in the roof, would lenders consider it unlettable just on the basis it needs updating? I want get some idea if this is doable from anyone with experience in getting a buy-to-let mortgage for auction property, and what hurdles you had with it. Pictures are attached. Appreciate your help members. Mohsin.