Where do you get the money for things like extensions/new kitchens?

[Banania]

Sorry this is really nosy & a bit clueless. Just wondering how people generally fund big jobs on their house like extensions, kitchen overhauls etc. We bought a house a couple of years ago, it's totally fine for now, but long term will need some (a lot) of work done. But it seems like costs will run so high - so it will take us years and years to save for. Is that pretty normal, or do you look into other financing options?

To work out how your repayments would increase, you can use an online calculator as it will depend on the equity left, house value and the period of your mortgage.

You can go to your current mortgage lender and get an additional loan on your property. Interest rates aren't as good as a lot of current mortgage deals.

You can remortgage.

You can get a personal loan if you want to borrow up to £25k. Usually you would pay this off over a shorter period.

Savings, if you have them, are obviously great.

We are funding our changes by savings, maybe a bit extreme but we took work abroad that came with benefits of free accommodation.

Probably won't be as bad as I think but we are dreading rejoining the real world and bills. We don't intend to go abroad again but we wouldn't rule this out if we needed to save money again.

Had no debt other than mortgage, added £50k onto mortgage for building extension. Had previously made some overpayments so overall it wasn't too much extra.

The inside stuff has been done slowly from savings. And renting out the spare room has helped. Our short-term lodger is lovely and very happy so still here a year later!

Banania - changing the figures slightly to make it simpler.

Bought for around £340k start of 2010, mortgage was about £275k.

Remortgaged 2015 to fund extension, value had gone up by a third, we'd paid off quite a chunk of the mortgage. So we borrowed an extra £80k (so remortgaged for about £320k IIRC) but because of slightly better LTV and lower interest rates (current deal is 1.79%), mortgage repayments stayed about the same.

2 year deal about to expire and now, value has shot up with extension, have paid down mortgage for another 2 years, and LTV is down to about 50% so mortgage payments are actually going down this time!

We are taking out a homeowner loan.... fingers crossed the valuation goes ok on Friday! It's like a second mini mortgage really. We also have a small pot of savings.

We have no other debt and whilst we could have saved, it would have taken years. We bought the property with benefit of planning and knowing it needed extending, as such we paid a lot less than we were originally expecting to pay for a house. Even with the extra borrowing we are still borrowing less than we would have on a mortgage at the price we were looking at houses for (if that makes any sense ).

Saving, saving, saving and being careful with money (no Sky, latest iPhone, takeaways and running a crappy car). We also bought a wreck in London, did it up ourselves and sold it for a big profit. The money was mostly used to buy a new wreck which we're also doing up ourselves but we've saved some of the cash to fund the extension, new kitchen and loft conversion.

We remortgaged for major renovations. We anticipated needing to save, but over the three years we had been in our hous, the equity had increased 40%, so we were able to remortgage, release some equity and Lee repayments fairly similar (within about £80/month).

We've just done garage conversion and new kitchen and we'd saved very hard for a few years.

We're in a similar situation to name changed, and are remortgaging too. I would point out that, even though your mortgage repayments may be less, because LTV is better & interest rates are lower, you still have to pay the extra back in the long run. I know it's obvious, but sometimes it sounds like free money. You can always sell and repay that way (assuming house retains its value) but ultimately you're taking on more debt.

I've never done this and assumed everyone just saved up. Always a learning curve on MN.

We remortgaged to an interest only offset mortgage borrowing more than we needed and then offsetting this with savings. When we eventually had the extension done we drew down the money. We have now paid off the mortgage with an inheritance. Well not strictly paid off but it is fully offset but we have the option of drawing downup to £250k if we needed it.

Stokey makes a good point. You think because your repayments are about the same, you're no worse off but of course you have more debt. The upshot however is (if you've sensibly extended / improved) on paper you should be in at least the same position (ideally better) as before - on the basis that the value of the house has increased by at least what you spent!

Additional borrowing on our mortgage plus savings (helped by a small inheritance and being able to say goodbye to the £1000-a-month childcare bill when the kids started school).

We lived here for 8 years before doing any work at all. The smaller jobs we save for and do a bit at a time. I've just got a loan for a kitchen which will be paid off in 4 years. And I live in a flat which is very low maintenance.