Extending mortgage?

[Bigbongos123]

Hi guys. We moved to our first property this month, we knew it was a doer upper... but we massively misjudged the impact it would have on our family. The stress of living in a house we can't 'get comfortable' in because it's quite frankly ( mostly cosmetic) hideous and the list of jobs is completely endless... even just small ones... and then we get no family time and we bicker because we have small children to care for and one of us then can't do said jobs because we are stuck caring for them. You get the idea.

I reckon we need 20k. The plan was to wait, save a bit, do a bit and repeat. I'm not sure this is a good idea anymore.

Can we ask to borrow and add onto our mortgage? We've been in a month so we've no equity etc at the mo and I'm a bit clueless being Ftb. Any advice gratefully received!

You need to contact your lender. As far as I know, different lenders have different policies. We're with Post Office (Bank of Ireland) and they have a service called "Borrow More" which I think is available after a month (it might be 3 months) of instalments. It will also depend on how much you borrowed in the first place (if you borrowed say 90% of the value of the house, then you're unlikely to be able to get any more) and whether you'd meet the affordability / eligibility criteria for borrowing more.

Just give them a call and say you're thinking of extending - would it be possible.

We took 80k less than what they said they'd lend us as we went for a cheaper house, but our ltv was 90% ... I guess I could call them.

You could apply for a home improvement loan which I think can be taken over a max of ten years. You could always overpay it to pay off quicker. Might be an option if you don't have equity to borrow more on the mortgage. Obviously same rules apply with affordability.

The problem is you can't add it to your mortgage, you will have to take it as a second home loan usually as a higher interest rate and with different terms. We had similar where we were going to do an extension but ended up not doing it. Check with your lender.

If it's 20k you're after, might you be able to take out some 0% interest cards to buy materials on? + pay cash ( or get a small loan) for labour costs? It could be a big stressful for a while, but when you come to remortgage, you'll have a lot more equity in the house and get a better deal.

Ps you'd also need to look at the fees involved in adding more to your mortgage - might work out a lot more than a good deal on a personal loan.