Nervous first time home buyer needs reassurance

[xxxIntergalacticxxx]

Hi all, I thought this would be a good place to go for honest advice and possibly (hopefully) reassurance that everything will work out OK.

Myself and my partner are wanting to buy a flat before I give birth in May, we’re first time buyers and have around £60k-£75k (depending on how much I can persuade my parents to help) in deposit money. We’ve built up a sizeable chunk of that ourselves due to this being a planned pregnancy.

BUT my partner is a university lecturer (with a PhD so he’s got that Dr title - does that make a difference?) on a ZERO hours contract. He gets a lot of work and the uni are very keen to keep him on long term and want to give him a job properly but HR are delaying. No realistic prospect of proper contract for perhaps even a year. I have a part time permanent contract. Partner earns about £19k yearly and I earn £13k, so together earn £32k.

I know it’s not a lot of money to earn and that’s why I’m nervous. The broker said a couple of months ago we could only borrow £75k. But after a year of my partner’s continuous job that might change, that year is very soon so we’ll check again with broker.

We need really £100k-£120k in loan to get a big enough flat. Is this realistic? Is there anything else that could help?

Also, do lenders look negatively upon women whose pay drops after they give birth? If we needed to wait a few months would that have negative consequences for a mortgage application?

I think the difficulty is likely to be the zero hours contract. I would have thought you’d be able to borrow £100k from a lender on the basis of your earnings - on a similar amount we borrowed about £112k, but we have our own business (this was our joint income including dividends, I was on maternity leave at the time) and had several years of accounts showing consistent or higher income. Unfortunately with no guarantees that his income won’t go away completely, you may struggle. You definitely need the help of a broker as they should hopefully have knowledge of lenders who will help and it’s likely you’ll be on a higher interest rate initially but then when it comes time to remortgage it’s he’s got a contract you may get a much better deal and may be able to borrow more. I would get whatever you can, buy something even if it’s not ideal and prove you are reliable.

Your dp's Dr title means nothing to lenders, they are only interested in his (and your) salary.

As a PP said lenders aren't interested in peoples titles it's all about job earnings and job security

The zero hours contract will be a problem. If he's only earning 19k a year then that doesn't sound like an awful lot of work. They must only be getting him in part time surely?The zero hours contract thing is an absolute disgrace although not the point of the thread. Shocking that he has been out in this situation. It's utter bollocks. Is there such a thing as a broker who specialises in zero hours contracts?

Hi @sonicbook yes I agree that £19k is not a lot of money but he does more teaching than some full time contracted staff (according to him) but the issue is being only paid during term time which brings down the pay over the year average, and he does a lot of work planning and marking which falls outside the hours he’s paid for (like a lot of educators do). I do think it is a terrible way that universities have gone with this kind of payment for work as it holds back people from having a normal life, but it’s what we have to deal with now and I’m thankful we’re still in employment unlike some of my friends.

We’ve discussed how we would get a smaller place if we absolutely couldn’t get a mortgage on a larger flat. We also have an asset we could sell which would bring in £30k but we don’t want to have to do that, but it’s still on the table.

Also @sonicbook I don’t know about other brokers but ours is very good and is able to help us with legal stuff too. Wouldn’t want to change brokers at this stage.

It does sound like you have options which is good. Sorry I'm not more help, I just think it's despicable.

Does your dh have any other source of income in which case he should be registered as self employed and then 3 years later the mortgage company can take his lowest earning year and work with those figures to give you a mortgage.

Even yourself if you have 2 income streams you should be registered as self employed.
Atm the only permanent income is your p/t job.
Job titles and qualifications don’t mean anything.

Why such a low salary?

@Oliversmumsarmy about the self employment, he used to have that sort of work but gave up most of it post PhD to focus on getting academic opportunities. The pay for self employment over the last 3 years is negligible. I agree the pay does seem low, but from what I understand about early career academics they have to take low pay initially before landing better jobs with more experience. A couple of years worth of experience can get a much better salary, I hope!

Hi OP, I agree with previous posters that the zero-hours contract would be problematic. I also think that it's very important to be realistic about the prospects of getting an open-ended contract in HE. In cases where the issue is moving to open-ended employment, it's not usually HR that causes delays (although they are known to be really slow and inefficient) but management and I would be seriously concerned about their commitment if they are blaming HR for the delay.

@Aria11 yes usually I’d agree but I believe many universities have implemented policies (perhaps directed by upper management but carried out by HR) where during the “Covid Crisis” there is a recruitment freeze, so contracts which may have been given in normal times are being held up. Depends on the university, of course. This country is probably not the best place to be when starting out a career at the moment... we don’t have any other options.

Hi OP, you are perfectly right about the current freeze in recruitment. There is an expectation that there will be more job openings soon, more than what would normally be the case, as student recruitment is up in many institutions. The usual criteria would apply in such cases though, e.g. in terms of publications etc. and I would think that it's important to bear this in mind, especially if your partner is looking for a research and teaching post.

xxxIntergalacticxxx

What I was trying to say is if he counted his zero hours contract work together with any SE stuff (no matter how little) then for mortgage purposes after 3 years you would have an income to show the mortgage company.