When Mr Boo and I decided to move in together we were advised that buying our own home would be better than renting. Being just 18 years old at the time we were a little clueless about how to go about getting onto the property market. We’d managed to find a small one bedroom flat that would suit the two of us but after visiting our bank we were told that we were unable to get a mortgage as we had a low credit score.
Still living at home, with no credit cards, no loans or anything had put us at a disadvantage as the bank had no ideas what we would be like at paying our mortgage. Mr Boo’s parents put us in contact with a broker who specialised in mortgages, we sat we him and he went through all our earnings. At the time I worked part-time although had regular overtime which given I had normal rate, overtime rate, unsociable hours rate, Saturday rate, Sunday rate plus and added working time directive included on my payslips was not easy to understand but he took it in his stride.
As we lived at home we didn’t really have an idea about what our outgoings would be but he had brought over the council tax rates, average water bills costs etc for us to take a look at and give us an idea on how much we would be spending each month. With all the expenditure details, our ID documents and details of the flat we wanted to buy he went away to see what he could do.
A few days later he called to say that he had managed to locate a bank that would be willing to give us a mortgage but just needed to provide more payslips (usually you only need 3 months, but was asked to provide 6 months) as they just wanted to check that my overtime was regular and that it wasn’t just covering extra shifts here and there.
We provided the extra details and within a week we had our mortgage offer come through, with just a survey needed we had finally managed to get a mortgage offer. Whilst we had to pay a fee for using a mortgage broker he really saved us the time to shop around for the different mortgage suppliers and over come our low credit score.
How did you get on to the property ladder?
Disclosure: This post is brought to you in collaboration Santander, who actually give us our first mortgage.
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