buying/selling houses with debt - advice please

[Faybells]

Hello all. dont use this site much so please bear with me :-)

I need some advice re. selling/buying houses with debt as have no idea where to start.

My partner and i bought our house 4 yrs ago this july. Our combined income then was 20k more than what we earn now (i now work part time locally since having our son). Our house has gone up in value by £40 approx. We have considerable debt (£18k - £11k accrued when we were young free and wreckless. We then had a financial crisis a year after buying the house, which we needed a £7k loan for). We have been incredibly thorough 'doing the books' and budgeting every single penny, consolidated our debt, paid off more than the minimum each month and generally worked bloody hard at sorting our finances out. I am proud we have wisened up and made great progress. My partner has also recently taken a new job with a better salary allowing further increase in debt repayments. I havent checked but im pretty sure that despite our debt, our credit scoew shouldn't be too bad because of how we have been managing our repayments. but ill have to check!!!

However. i am desperate to move. My partner wants to wait a couple of years to pay most of the debt off before we move. But the area is awful, the neighbours are constant source of aggrivation - drinking in the street, lots of visitors buying drugs, late night revving of engines/music, horrific arguments all times of day, etc etc. The police come occasionally but nothing changes. The area is generally not great. my son is 3yo and i wld love to get him into a nice area before he starts school in 2016.

My question is - does anyone have any similar experiences of selling/buying with a large amount of debt? Can we use the money we made on the house to cover fees? Or do we need save up a moving fund to cover these? wld it be best to wait till the debt is gone? Im just not sure whats realistic or where to start really.

Any advice greatly appreciated

Thanks in advance x

I think the key is to see a mortgage advisor to see what your chances are of getting a mortgage and for how much

How much equity do you have in the house : as a percentage
as that will be significant

Moving from property 1 to property 2 9 years ago, we didn't need a deposit due to accrued equity (the solicitor agreed this with our vendor's solicitor -conversely our solicitor verified that an appropriate deposit existed from our buyer). BUT you will need funds to cover estate agent fees and your solicitor and stamp duty plus VAT - these mount up and ideally you'd want to pay these upfront rather than add to mortgage (if even possible). Are you moving sideways or trading up? And your DH may have a point! Rent for a while if the sums add up? Are you going to have trouble selling your property and getting what you need? You have to disclose known problems such as noisy neighbours on the buyer's questionnaire. Debt used to be deducted from borrowing but I know there is tighter lending criteria: the old system was £7000 credit card debt deducted from total amount which could be borrowed.