mortgage advice for first time buyers (in Scotland)

[MamaGeekChic]

Not sure if the scottish bit makes a difference.

I wondered if any of you knowledgeable people might be able to help me with a few questions, it seems like everyone around us is trying to sell us something or still lives in a time when mortgages were easy to come by...

1. How is the process affected if the deposit is being paid by the house builder? There seems to be a lot of these around and i'm not entirely sure how it works/what the technicalities are- would it make a mortagage harder to get?

1. How difficult would it to be to get a mortgage with patchy credit history (around the 'fair' mark with the credit agencys) if all debt it paid off, I have a 10% deposit and I'm not looking for a massive multiplier (around 2.5 times my annual income)

1. How do lenders view commission as earnings? I'm paid around 50% salary and 50% commission, this has been steady (in fact increasing slightly) for the last 2.5 years.

Thank you to anyone who can help with any of the above.

I'd recommend you get yourself an independent mortgage adviser to steer you through the options. On your first question, the main effect will be what % of the value of the property you are borrowing and whether a builder paying a deposit means they retain any element of ownership or if it's simply a cash discount. Patchy credit history will be more important to some lenders than to others. Outstanding debts are taken into account. Each has their own policy so you need to shop around. On the question of commission, if you can produce 2.5 years of payslips showing that you have a steady income each month, I think that will be treated as your de facto salary. Again, it depends on the lender's policy. If your commission was more patchy... say it was paid just once a year as a bonus... that would be different.

Agree with Cogito.

As an ex-bank mortgage advisor, I have always used independent brokers as the best option BUT they are just a middleman so please ensure all paperwork is double checked - ours was good and had us initial each page of the application so there was no doubt regarding the figures.

I still have friends in the industry with horror stories of lenders refusing to remortgage at renewal time after the fixed rate/set period has ended because the "advisor" has massaged the figures.

thank you both :)