Why is finding a house so hard?

[Rainbowhairdontcare]

We're trying to find a house we can afford. It looks like without struggling too much we can afford a £205k one.

The problem is that we haven't been able to find one for that price.

Most are three bedrooms with two being a good size and the 3rd one being the size of a shoebox.

We have 4 DC. (11 DS, 9DD, 7DD, and a newborn). The three older children only live with us 50% of the time but obviously they need a room and not a bed in the living room.

Mortgage payment is not a struggle at all it is substantially lower than rent.

Houses that will work for us are between 15 and 20k on top.

My cousin is willing to lend me some money but at an eye watering APR. (14%)

Our plan is to get approved for a mortgage and then ask for a personal loan with a much lower APR.

Our take-home income is of about £2800 and the mortgage with the loan on top would be below £950.

Our current rent is that and we really need a bigger house, particularly because I work from home at times giving language lessons and I have zero privacy.

You should have a look at the " Money saving expert" site.
I think you could "shtooze?" the top up loan on 0% credit cards almost indefinitely.

@665TheNeighbourOfTheBeast yes that's more or less the plan. But I need to get the top up loan first, and the put it on a credit card/personal loan because no one will give us a mortgage with credit card debt/and or personal loans.

The only uncertainty about that is that we have no idea how much we'd be able to transfer into a loan (both my credit cards have a cash deposit feature so I know at least we can do that with 10k).