Mortgage and pregnancy worry

[Dullardduck]

Last year (when I was single) I bought a house with a five year fix. I am now in a relationship and we hope to have children in the next couple of years.

If we are lucky enough to be blessed with children, I would want to reduce my hours to part time after my maternity leave.

However this means that when my fix ends I would be on a lower salary.

Will this mean I can’t renew my mortgage?

For example, I borrowed five times my salary last year and if I do go part time, there will be much more than five times my (new part time) salary left to pay off.

I am worrying that I will either lose my house or have to postpone my plans to have children.

If you renew with the same provider I am pretty sure they don’t even do the checks again. Do you intend to ever have your partner on the mortgage too?

Can you add your partner to the mortgage as that would probably help the income to mortgage ratio.

I don't think it will be the mortgage availability that will be the issue but rather whether you can afford a mortgage on a reduced income while also paying for child costs.

Presumably your DP will also be contributing to the child costs too though.

You don't have to remortage after the 5 year fix. The 5 year fix is to end the interest rate, not the mortgage.

The borrower then gets transferred onto the SVR if they don't remortgage. If you can't get a good mortgage offer then just stay on the SVR until you do.

Thank you. I would be happy to add my partner to the mortgage but is there a way to financially protect myself if we were to ever split? Obviously I do not want that to happen!! But I’m also conscious I spent many years saving up for a big deposit!

As PP have said you don’t need to remortgage, do affordability checks with your existing provider as long as your monthly payment doesn’t increase

if you can’t get a new product you'll just go on their SVR

Just renew with the same provider. We have just done this and it took the stress out of it all. Tbh the rate we were offered was very much the same as the market anyway. We literally logged online and switched. No affordability checks. Took about 3 minutes to complete.