Mortgages in these time - any advice gratefully received

[AngeChica]

Any mortgage advisors or IFAs - would love some advice on our situation.

DH and I came into our relationship with a lot of debt. We bought a 2 bed terraced house 6 years ago for £92k. Someone also saw fit to give us a secured loan for £30k. We have a DS now and are now looking to move to something a little bigger but our house is pretty much worth only what we paid for it and we have no savings. Our combined income is about £70k which looks good on paper but we seem to have so many outgoings we don't have much left to save at the end of each month...

Are there any mortgage companies still left out there who will give us a 95% mortgage and agree the secured loan can continue on a new property? Thanks for any advice.

I'm not a mtge advisor but we used to have a mahoosive mortgage which was well over 3X income (I know that's not exactly your situ but ykwim) which we organaised through Savilles Private Finance.

Otherwise, you could try John Charcol? I think they did one for us a long time ago as well.

Hi, we're in the process of buying at the moment and have done a lot of recent research on the best deals available so while I'm not an IFA / broker, I can give you some info based on what I've found.

• 95% LTV is no longer available except for one specialist deal with Lloyds TSB (I think) that involves having a guarantor on the mortgage so it seems to be aimed at first-time buyers whose parents can back the mortgage for them.

• With 90% LTV you can get some deals but the rates are relatively high. HSBC offer both a fixed and tracker deal for 90% LTV but the 2-year fixed is 5.49% (pretty insane considering rates are 0.5%) and the tracker is a lifetime tracker at 4.49% above base.

• From our survey of the market, I got the impression that the banks are regarding anyone with less than 15% equity as undesirable customers as they're charging such high rates relative to base. The best rates (2.5%) are only available to people with 40% equity and even 25% equity doesn't get you a particularly great deal. Lloyds TSB are offering the best rates at the moment (around 3-4.5% depending on equity) as far as I can see.

So for your situation, it sounds like you will need to stay put for now until credit conditions change, especially with the secured loan on top of the mortgage. Don't take my word for it though as I'm not an IFA or anything. You could always go and meet with an advisor at your bank or at a local broker to get some official advice. I'm only going on what I've seen when we were applying for mortgages. The banks are not interested unless you have immaculate credit, cash to put down / equity and even then they're taking 2-3 weeks to clear funds and process paperwork once you've offered on a property!