The Lemon Fool

Hi all,

I've had a £270k repayment mortgage with Nationwide for the last 5.5 years. The house (my first) was initially valued at £340k, but I've spent about £100k on it since, adding bedrooms, en suites, a garage, etc, so it's probably worth nearer £475k.

When I got the mortgage, I had a £70k permanent job. Life has moved on, and through my own choice I've been through various combinations of employed work, consultancy through my limited company and IR35 (public sector) work through my limited company. I have never defaulted on the mortgage – in fact I’m now in a position to think about overpaying against it.

I am thinking about moving house in the next few years. The house is not currently overlooked, but some kind people are going to start building a housing estate around my garden next month, with 4 houses looking directly into my garden.

My current work situation is that I earn c.£550-£600 per day in my sector – in a combination of employment (with a government dept on a kind of zero days contract, where no work is guaranteed but with a maximum of 200 days per year) and short term consultancy projects through my limited company. I generally get 3 or 4 days’ work per week. Assuming that I’ll have to go through all the affordability checks again at the point of moving house – do people think that I’ll struggle to remortgage or even port the current mortgage because of the non-permanent-job nature of my income?

I’d be interested to hear what you all think.

Thanks in advance,

Bee

Banks normally want to see at least 2 years of professional accounts and tax returns for that sort of employment. If there's a reasonably "steady" income, it'll be OK.

That sounds much more positive than I thought. Yes, total income is fairly steady - it just swaps around a bit between the ltd co and employment year on year.

Should I use a mortgage broker when I come to move, or just try myself with the major banks and see where I get to?

Thanks for the reply!

I'm a bit late to this but I'm a contractor and used Freelancer Financials as a mortgage broker when buying my current place and can recommend them. Your current lender should be your first port of call but you usually need a specialist broker as the regular bank staff just aren't up to speed with day rate contracts.

I'm guessing plans are on hold for now but good luck for when things start moving again.