Mortgages argh - broker or lender recommendation?

[NearlyFree17]

In the past I have sorted out mortgages directly with lenders with no problem but I am struggling this time as my circumstances are more complicated. The deals I am looking at, the monthly payment would be around 25% of my take home income, the same as I am currently paying but I am still not meeting the affordability criteria for my current lender (BoI) or bank (Santander). I got an "AiP" from L&C which was woolly about how much I could borrow but left me with at least a £30k shortfall of what I need to borrow.

The issues are

• I have a 0% interest credit card debt of a few £K due to costs associated with my divorce. I intend to repay this from the proceeds of sale of the marital home. This seems to be causing a problem. If I repaid this would it help?

-Part of my income is from child maintenance and child benefit and its hard to see which lenders will include this as income.

-I have a car HP agreement. I cant do much about that.

Any ideas?

Halifax used to provided you had 6 months worth of maintenance proof and tax credits and cold benefit.

I'm in a very similar position to you although going online it does seem that Santander are one of those lenders that will take into consideration child maintenance payments which increased the amount they would lend me considerably even though I don't need that much.

I also intend to hold back some of the equity (deposit) to pay off credit cards but have a car on finance that I can't do anything about until next year. Just putting the final details in to get AIP.

Have budgeted on a 50/30/20 ratio. So 50 fixed outgoings, 20 in miscellaneous expenditures and 30 for flexible spending.

Hoping that's enough but very nervous about getting approved for a mortgage on my own and worried if it rejected because I've made and error it will delay me being about to apply again and potentially not being able to get the house I want. Hence the reason for possibly using a broker just to get it right?