As mortgage brokers the most common issue we overcome for our clients is affordability. Believe it or not, there’s over 900 registered lenders in the UK. Of course, not all are actively lending to new customers, here at Advantage FS we’re proud to have used 87 different first charge mortgage lenders (data to September 2023) when finding our clients the most suitable mortgage product.
As you can imagine, the amount of money that each lender is prepared to lend varies massively. A common denominator is often the dreaded ‘income multiple’. This essentially means that whilst the lender using a calculator determines how much they can lend to you, there is an ultimate line in the sand at a certain multiple of the income used. Quite often this is 5 times your income.
This is not necessarily the case if your income is from one or more pensions. Some mortgage lenders that offer retirement mortgages (Including Retirement Interest Only) will determine how much they can lend to you based on how much disposable income you have left over each month after your essential expenditure, this often means that the amount you can borrow is over 5 times your income. In some cases, over 10 times!
Here’s a few examples of customers we have helped in 2023:
Example 1
A Married couple, aged 69 and 73. Combined pension income of £58,000 with no financial dependents and no unsecured debts. We were able to obtain a mortgage of £500,000 for this couple which allowed them to help out their son and extend their home.
Example 2
Widow, aged 65. Her husband died in 2018 without life insurance, the mortgage was affordable one the current fixed rate but the payments were going to more than double in a few months when the fixed rate deal comes to an end. She would not be able to afford the new mortgage payment. Her pension income was £21,000 in total and she needed to borrow £118,000. She had spoken to several brokers and had just about given up hope of being able to re-mortgage at a lower rate and was resigned to sell the property she had lived in for over 30 years. We were able to secure her a mortgage for £108,000 on an interest only basis with a payment similar to the payment she was making at the time. She had the money in savings to reduce the overall mortgage debt to £108,000 and was over the moon that we were able to arrange a mortgage which enabled her to keep the house.
If you’re over 50, whether you’re coming to the end of a mortgage, purchasing a new home or interested in releasing capital for any purpose. We’re here to help, get in touch today for a free mortgage direction call.
Still have questions? Get in touch to see how we can help you.
Your home could be repossessed if you fail to make your mortgage payments.
