With increased interest rates and falling house prices, alot of borrowers are finding it difficult to get that first step onto the housing ladder. Our mortgage advisor Nick Chwiej gives a few tips on getting ready to apply for a mortgage:

Mortgages can be a fairly simple process if everything is lined up neatly. While this is usually not the case as there are so many variables to life, there are a number of ways in which you can put yourself in a favourable position when it comes to securing a mortgage.

Income

The first, and most obvious point is your income. The more you earn the more you can borrow. While there is no exact science to this you can expect the maximum mortgage you can get to be around 4-5 times your income (for people buying together this means your joint income). Try not to stretch yourself to your absolute maximum when purchasing a property. Life costs can often fluctuate so committing yourself to a mortgage that means you won’t have much spare cash each month can cause a lot of avoidable stress. Try to avoid falling into the trap of wanting a dream home, this can often cloud judgement and push you toward spending more than is reasonable.

Expenditure

Keep track of your expenditure and try to cut out unnecessary expenses for example subscriptions to services you don’t use very often, anything that is making a dent in your bank balance that you don’t particularly need or want. The less commitments you have the better, it shows you’ve got lots of free income to go toward paying your mortgage.

Credit Score

Keep track of your credit score. You can sign up for free services such as credit karma or clearscore. These will both you give you a full overview of your credit commitments and your
payment history for these. For an even more comprehensive report you can use Experian, Equifax or CheckMyFile. Avoid missing payments at all costs, it works against you having to tell a mortgage lender you will pay them back when you’ve missed payments elsewhere. Of course this can’t always be avoided and there are still plenty of mortgage options out there if you do have any credit issues, but as a rule of thumb keeping a clean credit history is going to go in your favour when taking out a mortgage.

By keeping on top of these few things your ability to get the best possible mortgage product is greatly increased.