Sorry another question about buying off my landlord (clueless emoticon)

[Fluffycloudland77]

I'm self employed, and have been for 12 years. Would I be better be going to a mortgage broker rather than my bank?.

Also, are they going on earning multiples or affordability? If we can get a 3% deal then we could afford to make an offer but if they go on income multiples then probably not, I have really low outgoings eg the only credit aggreement I have is my car. No CC or loans or HP.

We have a £20,000 deposit if it's relevant.

Thank you if you can advise me, you are helping me through a really rough time. I was going to make an offer next year but I dont think we can raise the funds to do it this year.

I would definitely try a broker as there are some lenders which are much more open to self employed applicants and also some lenders which go more on affordability rather than multiples, and a good broker will know who these are.

Make sure you go to an independent "whole of market" broker rather than one which is tied to particular lenders.

London & Country are pretty good IME, they are independent and free.

We bought off our landlord which worked out well and saved on moving costs etc!

Definitely try a broker - we got a good deal through one and he helped us through a few tricky issues we had. We'd been turned down by our bank before that due to income multiples and the fact that we have children (HSBC have really tight lending criteria). The Building Socs seem better and more lenient for affordability criteria from what we found. Ironically we are paying less in mortgage than in rent which is a no-brainer unless those IRs go sky high all of a sudden!

We bought off our landlord too, and it was nice not to have to move.

We went through a broker as we had quite specific borrowing criteria (DH is close to retirement age and my income doesn't count as I'm only newly self employed).

Eventually he did find a Building Society that would consider us...it was all a bit stressful but worth it in the end.

DH was self employed when we first started applying for mortgages, but ended up being employed by a company he was working for before we found the right house for us.

Anyway Lloyds TSB were looking for a 10% deposit and 3 years worth of pay slips/proof of payment for a mortgaged based on only him being self employed (I am SAHM). Not sure about salary multiples, but I think in this climate it would be unwise to go above 3 x your yearly incomings no matter how frugal you are. I also remember they didn't offer interest only to self employed. This was in March/April last year so fairly recent.

Hope that info helps, good luck buying your house, so exciting!