Married person applying for mortgage as sole applicant - is it possible?

[AlisonsWaiting]

Name changed for this.

Husband has pants credit rating so it appears - so I'm looking to apply for a mortgage as a sole applicant. Have sounded out some brokers (am seeing one next week), and it seems to be a do-able, but difficult, scenario.

Does anyone have experience of this and any tips / advice going ahead if so?

(And if anyone can explain why it's difficult too, that would be helpful.) I can afford a (small) mortgage on my own and have excellent credit rating - so not sure why I'm being punished for his misdeeds!

When we bought our house the mortgage was just in my husbands name and there was no issues that I remember or any holdups caused by it.......

Thanks Joe - that's what I was wondering actually! If it was the other way round (man takes out mortgage, wife perhaps a SAHM and not contributing and therefore not on mortgage) - surely that's a really common scenario and how could it be so difficult?

I enquired about this and the mortgage adviser said they wouldnt advise it, something about if anything happened to dh the house would be taken off us - i didnt look in to it any further but im sure it you could do it

Thanks Paper. Poolbirth that's worrying... I don't understand what the broker meant by the 'wouldn't advise it'?

Alisons - i didn't quite understand what he meant and i did not go in to it. I know my friend has recently done it in just her dh name so you can do it x

I took out the mortgage in my name only, husband a contractor and poor credit rating. No problems but he had to sign a form to say he had no financial claim on the house. This was 3 years ago. HTH.

Our house/mortgage are in my name only, bought after getting married, it was no problem but was 14 years ago.

Yep. We did it too three years ago with no problems. Good luck!

I have just done this, the mortgage is just in my name as I am the main earner and my husband is older so this would have left us with a shorter term mortgage which we couldn't have afforded. I didn't have any problems -we pool all our income, and both work so it makes no difference I think. Good luck.

Yes, we did it because DH had just been made redundant and gone self employed, so it was based on my salary only.

Our house and mortgage is in my name because DH is 27 years older than me. His income is not taken into.

*account.

Thanks all! Is it the case that some lenders are okay with the arrangement, others not? That's what the broker seemed to be suggesting on the phone.

I asked DH last night and the only different bit we had was that the house was only in his name - the mortgage and deeds had to have the same name so it would of left me in a vulnerable position if anything happened to DH/we split up.

Our solicitor advised me to draw up an agreement to make us tenants in common/law (I can't remember the terminology but to make us have equal entitlement) once the sale had gone through.

We didn't ever do this due to one thing and another but did add me into the mortgage and deeds after our initial mortgage period, 3 years I think and there was no problem with that at all.

Thanks Jo, that's helpful.

Are both names on the deeds? It may be that's the issue if the mortgage names have to match those on deeds.

No, we'd be happy to have just my name on the deeds. And then add him on at a later date.