Buying and selling a house as a student

[srh96]

We bought our first house 2.5 years ago when we both worked full time. I have since gone back to uni and no longer work due to my frequent and long placement blocks. I pay my half of the mortgage and bills with my student finance and bursary. DP still works full time but doesn't earn enough for the mortgage to be in his name alone. Although I technically don't 'earn' anything, the mortgage company don't know any different and we pay everything with no issues.

We want to move house, is it possible to do this as I have no official income? We could stay with the same mortgage provider, but would they still re do all the financial checks?

Would it make a difference if we don't want to increase the mortgage amount?

Any advice on this would be much appreciated!

Yes, they will do all the financial checks.

You wouldn't meet the affordability checks, I'm afraid. You'll only be able to get a mortgage based on whatever your partner earns, plus some mortgage providers will accept certain benefits.

Very difficult as not only will they only take your partner’s income into consideration, they will consider you as a ‘dependent’ for the purposes of the calculation, meaning he’ll be able to borrow less as part of a couple than he could borrow alone.

Sorry @srh96 but as the others have said they'll want to see bank statements providing regular income even if you stay with the same provider (we just moved and stayed with the same lender and they rechecked everything as if we were new applicants). How long is your course for as it sounds like it will be best to wait until it's over? Or another option is to speak to a mortgage advisor as to whether anything is workable with your current set up (most will do free consultations).

I see, thanks everyone. Not what I wanted to hear but never mind!

We're wanting to move to an area where house prices are cheaper so our new budget is the same as what we'd sell our current house for. We bought cheap and renovated so we're hoping to make around 60k on this house when we sell it, this will go straight back into the next house hopefully.

I've got 2 years left till I qualify, so we'll have to wait. We have nightmare neighbours here and we're quite far from family. Where we want to move to is so much nicer, it's close to my sister and there's more green space, better schools, the and houses are bigger and cheaper there. It's a no brainer for us.

I might send an email to our mortgage broker and see if there's anything else we can do. If not we'll wait it out.

I'm in the same position OP, I'm studying nursing and can't sell and buy until I'm in paid employment for at least 3 months

@ajja2021 yep, I'm a student midwife. It's very frustrating isn't it.

OP we are only borrowing about 2/3 of remaining balance on our current mortgage (3/5 of what we borrowed 4 years ago) for a new house. We are both still in same jobs from when we bought this house 4 years ago, both had decent pay rises in that time and neither of us were furloughed at any point. We still had to do all the affordability checks etc to get a mortgage offer on our new house with the same bank. I think lenders are being far stricter than when we bought in 2017.

@Greenybluetowel that's good to know.

I kind of understand it from their point of view. Its just frustrating when you're paying your mortgage with no issues!

Hoping the next 2 years fly by.