Buying a house - timetable if what you pay when?

[ItsAllTLAsToMe]

DH and I are buying a house, and would obviously like to put as big a deposit down as possible. So, we have our deposit, £ for fees, and £ for a new car. If we could squeeze a little bit more into our deposit, we could get a better interest rate. We can save a decent amount per month at the moment, so depending when we have to pay things, we could put more £ into our deposit. Is this worth the stress / juggling ?

Well the fees are pretty fixed- solicitors, stamp duty, searches etc. but I would try and put more into the deposit- particularly if it means you can get a much better rate. The obvious thing is the car- do you need a new one? Also don't underestimate the time it takes to purchase a house- ours has taken 2 months and in that time that is two more lots of savings. We are saving like mad at the min and it is surprisingly easy- we used to fritter away cash!

Hmm, is 0.3% a much better rate? It looks like we'd save ~£25/month, so not a huge amount over 3/5 years. But it all counts.

We will need a 2nd car because of where we're moving, but we could buy a cheaper car, or maybe buy a car on finance (would probably rather not do this), or maybe borrow my Mum's little car for a while? I think I'll check all the sums today.

We used to fritter £ away too, I have no idea what on!

0.3% may not be much now, but when interests rates go up, which they will, it will make a big difference. Even if you're getting a 2 year fixed deal when you come to remortgage you could face a huge hike, so I'd definitly go for a larger deposit and the better % rate.

Remember to look at product fees as well as interest rates. At the cheaper end of the scale product fees can negate any saving you make on a slightly lower interest rate.

As to timetable of paying, we didn't pay any money at all until we were ready to exchange.

We had our product fee and the survey added to the mortgage. We were advised to do this because if the sale fell through we wouldn't be charged whereas if we paid upfront they wouldn't refund charges. Not sure if that differs from lender to lender but we were told the same thing by two different lenders.

Thanks all. With regard to the deposit issue, we're going to put down as much as we can, but we're not going to stress ourselves out by trying to hit the next cut-off IYKWIM.

ILikeBirds, we've been told the same thing by our mortgage broker about adding fees onto the mortgage. Although our mortgage broker has generally been a bit rubbish today, so we're a little bit stressed about that at the moment.

ILikeBirds, when did you have to tell your lender how much your deposit was though? Obviously when you applied for the mortgage, but what if you then saved a bit more £ before completion?

Sorry, I think I got completion and exchange confused .

Bump, as we're still dithering about maximising our deposit.

We had a 20% deposit when we applied and always knew any extra we saved would not get us into the 25% bracket so we just made sure that we could make overpayments on the mortgage without penalty so overpaid a lump sum pretty much straight away. I think for most people 2 months savings is unlikely to be the difference between 10 and 15%.

Thanks, ILikeBirds. We've made it to 20% (yay!), so we're set I think .

Most lenders will allow an overpayment of up to 10% anyway, and if you are in a position to overpay even a little bit I would do. It will save you literally thousands over time.

Yes, financial - I've been playing with mortgage overpayment calculators a lot !