Has any taken 3-6 month moratorium on their mortgage at the beginning?

[Mortgageq1]

In the process of buying a house and as a part of the mortgage offer, we have been asked whether we’d like to take a moratorium of up to 6 months and our mortgage payments. I’m thinking I’d like to take 3 to 4 months. Just to ease us into being in the house so that we can afford to buy some furniture and bits and pieces, etc. It looks like it will only add on an extra 10 to 20quid to the monthly payment after that. Anyone else on this? posting here for traffic.

This is quite a weird thing for them to offer in 2025 without you asking imo. What lender is this?

Honestly I wouldn’t be taking a mortgage holiday for the first 6 months of your mortgage. It’s immediately falling into living beyond your means imo.

It’s called a delayed start…yes it was just offered. A friend of ours did it too so just wanted other opinions.

I wouldn't. Buy the essentials second hand and the rest as you go. Extra debt to pay for stuff isn't a great habit to start off on.

It just frees up money for the first few months on moving into a new house as far as I can see. I wouldn’t ordinarily spend the money, so I would be living beyond means.

That is an extra £10 - £20 a month every month for 25 years!!!!!

Absolutely not, I would be doing everything in my power to reduce the term and payments, not extend them.

It’s not extra debt as such …it’s just spread across the term. So say initial payments were 1500 they are now 1520

What exactly is it you need to spend the money on? Essential renovations? Or furniture and bits and bobs?

Doesn’t extend the term.

This isn't really a thing in the UK.

Do you mind if I ask what bank has offered you this?

But no, I wouldn't. I'd just crack on and pay the mortgage normally.

This, it's a lot OP.

Essential stuff to be honest. Carpentry work and a few other things.

Like what though? Replacing a rotten front door, or fitted wardrobes? One is far more essential than the other. If that latter, or furniture and bits and bobs like your OP said I wouldn't even consider it.
You really want to be bringing your mortgage down, not up before you've even moved it.

Ah ok, that’s interesting. Yes I’m not in uk.
thank you

@Digdongdoo with all respect it doesn’t matter what EXACTLY I need the money for I wasn’t asking about that. The topic was the moratorium. Thank you though.

Everyone on here is so offended by this for some reason. OP go for it if it's what you want. You never know when your circumstances might change and you ought be in the position to overpay on the mortgage.

No you don't have to say EXACTLY what it is. But what it is does make a difference in my opinion. But you're not in the UK so maybe your mortgage is much more affordable than an average uk mortgage, in which case most of our opinions will be redundant.

We are in a position to overpay, just not within the first 6 months of having the house. We are waiting on a cash injection due by Christmas. I wasn’t aware this wasn’t an option in other countries.

We’re not a million miles away from the UK to be honest so I assumed wrongly that this was something that might be an option in other countries. I wasn’t aware that this wasn’t an option in the UK thank you. I’ll ask on another more local forum if I can find one.

We did this, also not uk. It’s pretty common where we live. It’s didn’t add anything as the actual start date starts later also

ie finalised house purchase Sept, didn’t move until Mid Dec, started paying Jan. It meant we could pay rent Sept- Dec in Uk before we moved without double payments. Our mortgage started the Jan, although we legally owned from Sept beforehand

Most people do this here as things like chains on house purchase don’t exist either, so you often buy next house whilst you still own old house. And bank just lets you start 6 months later so you have time to sell old house or finish up old rental contract.

Do you have an emergency fund? If not, there is some logic to taking the delay to build up a bit of a buffer. However, if you’d just use it to spend money that you’re planning to spend in any event, albeit sooner, then I wouldn’t bother

Yes we have an emergency fund. We have savings for the dc for university. We just need extra cash to do a few more jobs we would like to do in the house and in that 3 months we could pay for that. We also have another small mortgage on another property to pay as that’s selling. So again it’s just to ease things over three months. Thank you.

We took a pause (also not UK), not at the start but due to a bad financial situation about ten years in. It really helped us out short term.
But like others have said, please think through the total of an extra 20 a month for the full term of your mortgage. Is there another way to pay for the things you want, e.g. credit card, short term loan, that won't add so much in total.

@Caspianberg thank you. That’s pretty much the situation we are in.

I would be careful. There is usually a minimum term between taking such breaks. If you are in trouble for payments in a years time, you may find they won’t allow you to have a break.