question re applying for a mortgage on a new property....

[itellyouwhat]

We have put an offer on a house which has been accepted. We want to port out current mortgage and borrow the extra from the same lender. My DH is self employed and due to get his 2nd set of yearly accounts after April 5th (in initial conversations with the lender they have said they accept 2 years of statements from applicants who are self employed). We have worked out what we can afford to borrow but I know lenders are a lot tighter these days and these two amounts are likely to very different. A relative has offered to lend us the shortfall, but i want to borrow as little as I can from said relative. My query is that i'm not sure how it works or how much I should ask the lender for. Do I go in high? If it's rejected can i then tell them we have a relative willing to give us the rest and that we still want to go ahead with the purchase of the house? Or if i went in low and it was accepted would they then tell me how much more they could give us on top ? Hope this makes sense?

I would say ask them to lend you what you need in order to buy the house and take it from there.

I'd go and ask how much, on principle, they would lend, without bringing the house you'd like to buy into the equation, giving them the equity you'd take across as well.
DH and I did this (a long time ago) to buy our current house. They said they would lend us (say) £100, and we laughed and said there was no way we were committing to a house requiring a mortgage of more than £70, so we were free to buy the house we wanted.

I tried to get that answer from them but all they could tell me in initial conversations was how much they could 'maybe' lend us which ranged massively and was a lot more than an IFA came up with. They told me they couldn't take the application any further until we'd had an offer accepted on a property. But until i know what DH earned for tax year 2014-15 i will wait until i call again. So i'm confused as to how much I ask for. Things are very different today and my sense is they will lend us less than we are prepared to borrow. I guess i'll just be honest and tell them we want to borrow x but if we can't then i can get the rest from a relative. I just hope that doesn't ring any alarm bells with them for whatever reason and they refuse to give us a mortgage? I'm a bit clueless of the process as you can tell!

I think you borrowing from elsewhere will also limit the amount you can borrow - like having credit cards limits the amount?
Maybe make the rest a "gift" rather than a loan?

yes you are right. I will say gift rather than a loan.