refused remortgage - will it affect ability to get another remortgage?

[trickydickie]

I applied to remortgage with the post office. I didn't ask for anything more than I owe on my existing mortgage with the halifax.

The post office have declined the application on the grounds of affordability.Mortgage amount is £154000. My husband earns £56000 and I earn £7500 self employed. We have four dependent children.

My husband has a company car which he gets paid for and then the loan company take £615 a month directly out his wages. If he lost his job or whatever the car would go and his company would sort the car out. It is not in my husbands name.

The post office said they declined us due to our number of children and this car loan. Even though it is not Dh's car, it belongs to his company.

We got this mortgage with Halifax just over 3 years ago no problem with exactly the same circumstances (actually I wasn't working). I know different lenders have different criteria but it seems harsh.

I am very concerned now this will go against us if I go elsewhere for a remortgage.

Do you think this will affect me??

I asked the Halifax for a remortgage last week but there deals were worse than my existing mortgage with them (which is not on a fixed deal anymore).

Any advice greatly welcome.

I think lots of lenders have tightened their lending criteria lately.
What about speaking to a whole of market mortgage broker? We used one last summer when we bought our house as we were in unusual circumstances - I was on Mat leave and we already had a mortgage on another property that we were planning to rent out but had no income from at the time. We found the broker useful as they knew instantly who would/wouldn't lend to us in those circumstances. Used London and country as recommended by Martin lewis and would use them again, we were happy with the deal they found us.

Just had a similar situation with hsbc!
Wanted to add £10k to the mortgage for work in the house and were refused due to the number if dependants - which I pointed out had t changed since we took the mortgage out 2 years ago!!
Even the chap I was spelling to in the phone seemed surprised tbh.
Very annoying as we are in a fix for another 2.5 years....

Don't know if it seems worth the hassle now. We are on 3.99% at the minute. If I have to pay a load of fee's for the mortgage for a fixed fee for say 2 years I may not make a great saving.

I am just worried that this looks bad for us now.

I don't want to add anything on to my mortgage. I just want a fixed deal as my existing one ran out over a year ago.

I'll speak to London and Country and ask how much they will charge me.

We got refused with halifax but natwest loaned to us. They all have different criteria.

You need an underwriter with some common sense.

London and country won't charge you, they make their money from the lenders. Definitely worth a call, we needed a high (90%) ltv and got a rate of 4.5% (iirc), no fees, free survey and £300 cash back on completion

Was it because you included two earners rather than one? Sounds odd but we could borrow more with just me on the mortgage as DH is self employed. Nationwide gave us 5 times my income, vs 3.5 times our joint income. Might be worth checking.

I have since tried the halifax website and they will give us enough to cover our mortgage if I just deduct car loan from Dh's wage. If I include it they will only give us £80,000. Natwest and Nationwide will give us more than enough to cover our mortgage (according to their affordability calculator) if I don't include that car loan. Think Nationwide will also cover our mortgage with the car loan details included.

Nationwide have some good deals. I will apply to them and also speak to London and Country. Maybe next week as too busy rest of this week. Thank so much everyone for all the advice.

Crochet, yes I have stopped including my earnings on the calculators. I will just apply using Dh's wages though including my name on the mortgage.

Getting a refusal just totally shocked me. We've never been in this type of situation before. We've only ourselves to blame, we should have been working harder at reducing our mortgage over the years.

When we applied for ours the broker deducted everything I pay for out of the business account (self employed but not ltd company).

This included our broadband, mobile phone, petrol costs etc.

To answer your question, it will depend on whether you were seeing if you were eligible (i.e. before making a formal application) or whether you actually applied?

I think it you were turned down at the early stage, then it won't affect another application. If you formally applied and then the application was refused, it may have an impact going forward. That is because some lenders (but not all) have a question on their application forms about whether you have ever been refused a mortgage. You will obviously have to asnwer yes if you have. Some will refuse to lend on that basis (assuming there was an issue with your circumstances and you'll be too much of a risk), others may just want additional information as to the reason why.

Thanks everone, thanks mandy. excuse typing as doing it single handedly at the moment.

ive just went onto natwest sight and they have a facility where you give your details and they do a soft search. This then tells you if they will lend to you.

Thankfully they will lend no prob giving dh's details, including company car loan. Funnily the search stopped when i put in my details as self employed for less than 2 years as joint application.

Feel much better now, they have fixed rate of 2.69% no fee. Fantastic.

Thanks everyone and I will be back if we don't get it.

That's a brilliant rate I hope it all goes well from now on.