We currently own a house that we rent out which we have a mortgage on with little to no equity in it, the rent more than covers the mortgage. My husband and I both earn in the region of 27k (me) to 30k (him) we have 2 kids although neither are in full time childcare anymore, we spend approx £1350 per month on all bills (incl things like sky and phone contracts etc and also the mortgage on property 1 which we have a separate income to cover) average monthly income for myself and DH is about 3,400 plus 420 that covers mortgage elsewhere, we also still get child benefit so an extra hundred or so quid per month. The bills we pay out include old debts from silly bugger days gone by that we're put on to payment plans after we defaulted and got behind.
Anyway this is the gist of it, for the last year or so I have been checking our credit reports regularly and all references to defaulted payments etc drop off over the next few months with the final one coming off in April, leaving us with shiny credit files and just the stuff we have kept up to date (mortgage, car, sofas etc). We have savings for a house deposit as we are currently in rented and we were going to begin looking in April time, except the perfect bargain house has come on the market now. This house is on for a knockdown price due to the time of year and the couple divorcing, it's a steal. We would never be able to afford this house otherwise. We have enough money for a 10% deposit but would any mortgage company touch us with a few (very old) defaults on our file? Is this house doomed to be 'the one that got away'? For informations sake the house is priced at 130k so a mortgage would be in the region of 117k.