Things to consider when applying for a mortgage

Getting a mortgage is big commitment, even if you already have one, looking to move home and potentially to a bigger mortgage is a big jump.

When you are at the point of beginning to look for a mortgage, there are a number of factors you will need to be taking into account before you sign on any dotted line.

Understanding how much you will be paying and for how long

Paying your mortgage off is no small mountain to climb, even on a repayment mortgage, there are so many years of payments to be made. Before you commit to your mortgage, look at the numbers and make sure they work for you. If you have plans to retire early or just want to be mortgage-free by a certain age, make sure you get the right mortgage term for this.

There are various mortgage types on the mortgage and when you first look it may be a little overwhelming, this post is a great first step into understanding the various types of mortgages.

Make sure you are comfortable with how much you are borrowing

Debt is daunting no matter how much it is but when you are borrowing hundreds of thousands, it is scary! When you are looking at homes, make sure the money you are borrowing is comfortable to make monthly.

Mortgages take up a huge amount of most peoples salary, however, you don’t want to be tied into a mortgage that gives you no wiggle room each month. This calculator will help give you an idea on your monthly payment for your mortgage.

Try to plan for the future

This is my one regret on our mortgage, I wish we had planned ahead for the future. We pushed ourselves to the limit in terms of our mortgage that there was no backup plan for maternity leave or even moving home. There was a time where we were just getting from month to month.

Looking back I would tell myself to make an overpayment from the start, even if it was just £10 a month. Then as we got pay rises I would have put this straight onto the mortgage before we noticed it in our bank. This would have allowed us to be in a better position to move than we are currently.

We can’t go back and change our approach though, we can only learn from this and hopefully help others just starting out.

I will never regret getting our mortgage when we did or the approach we have taken to it, what it has done is taught us a lot about money and mortgages. This is going to help us in future but also our family.