can you tell me about adding to my mortgage?

[thisisyesterday]

we're thinking of extending the back of our house, so that we can move the office downstairs and free up the third bedroom.

we can't covert the attic as there isn't enough headspace.

what makes a mortgage company say yay or nay to extending the mortgage? when we took it out we took the maximum we could get, we haven't paid off as much as we want to add to it yet, will that go against us?

also, I am not sure that it will add as much value to the house as we would be paying to have it done, will that be a black mark too?

dp'#s basic salary has gone up though. I guess what I want to know is what they make the decision based on? purely your ability to pay it back? or whether it adds value etc etc?

As long as the amount you would be borrowing in total is still a fair bit less, maybe 20%, of the value of the house NOW, and you can afford the repayments you should be fine.

If however your total borrowings are more than 80% the value of the house I suspect you'll find it difficult to extend the mortgage, even if you went to another provider.

As for whether you can afford the repayments the criteria will depend of the lender. Some lend a maximum of 3 times jooint income now, others will look at your total outgoings to assess affordability.

HTH

As a Mortgage advisor on maternity leave there are a variety of factors that they will look at

• Your ability to pay, ie was the mortgage originally based on 2 salaries and now there is only one. This may incluyde an affordibility calculation

• What the current property value is and what percentage of it you have a mortgage on currently. Do not rely on what properties are selling for on your street as a realistic valuation, if they do get a survey done it may come back less.

• What your overall loan to value will be with the additional borrowing. I don't think anyone will lend above 85% now.

Unless you are doing major work they will not look at the future value due to recession