Clueless FTB help!

[Sausagedognamedmash]

Any advice is greatly appreciated here.

We have a zoom meeting with a mortgage broker on Wednesday evening and I'm entirely clueless.

We both work full time and have a rough income of £55k (he gets commission and bonuses so can vary). We have a combined debt of around £13k but it is going down and have never missed payments. Both have good credit scores. We have 2 DC, 3 and 8.

We are planning on buying the house we currently live in from landlord at less than market value as we have put in a lot of work to bring the house up to scratch as this is our family home. This has been agreed in writing prior to us completing any works.

What do we need for this zoom meeting? What questions do we need to ask? Essentially we need to know our borrowing power from a low and high deposit point and realistic repayments.

Ideally we'd be debt free before doing this but our landlord wants to sell sooner rather than later.

We have family help for the deposit but no sum yet as this depends on the above.

I have no idea how I have become an adult with zero understanding of mortgages but I really need some help! Please!

I don’t think you need anything much, but some figures to hand about income and outgoings will be helpful as your mortgage broker might ask you questions about this to figure out what you can afford.

You need to know you're income and all your out goings. I have a spreadsheet with this on so has that to hand. They'll also ask for rough estimates on monthly spending on things like car, entertainment, kids clubs, food, fuel etc so things that aren't regular direct debits.

I'd want to ask the broker if they are 'whole of market' and so have access to all mortgage products, or just some.

I remember someone had to change solicitor because their solicitor wasn't on the mortgage company list, worth checking if yours is?

Here's a link to MSE

Have you done a rough calculation to see if you can borrow enough and what deposit you'll need?
The Halifax mortgage calculator is one of the better ones - I found it reasonably accurate for estimating how much we could borrow, & it accounts for debts, dependants etc.
Whack your details in to that and see what you can potentially borrow. Subtract that from the price. Difference is the minimum deposit. You'll also need a couple of thousand for conveyancing, searches, etc.
The LTV (loan to value, i.e. how big your deposit is) has a bigger impact on the interest rate you can get. A 10% deposit will usually mean a higher interest rate than a 25% deposit.
Family help for the deposit - is this a gift or a loan? They'll usually need to sign some paperwork saying it is a gift.

Ask about deposit amounts too, do you have an idea of the maximum the family can help with a deposit. If they can only stretch to the minimal amount that could also affect which mortgage companies will lend to you.