How is the mortgage process different for First Time Buyers?

It can be quite overwhelming as a first-time buyer – you haven’t been through the house purchasing process before, and mortgage lenders do use quite a lot of strange terminology and acronyms.

It can be quite daunting to someone buying their first property. The process is slightly different because you’re not selling one property to buy another one. This is your first purchase – that makes it slightly easier in that you haven’t got to rely on the sale of your existing property going through.

There’s lots of information to take in and learning to do. You’re not sure how long it’s going to take. That’s what we are here to help you with – not just finding you the most suitable mortgage deal but also helping you through that process.

How much can a First Time Buyer borrow?

Every lender has different criteria and affordability calculations. So our role is to understand your circumstances, such as how long you’ve been employed, whether you’re paid weekly or monthly, the amount of deposit, expenditures and your personal background.

We’ll look at whether you get a basic salary or bonuses or commission and take that into account alongside your existing commitments. That might be whether you have children or a car on finance, personal loans or credit card debt. It can all impact how much a lender is prepared to let you borrow.

Once we have taken all of that information into account we can come back and suggest how much you would be able to borrow and how much that’s likely to cost a month. We will always make sure that it is affordable.

Once a mortgage recommendation is made and you are ok with it, an agreement in principle will be obtained for you. This is effectively a certificate from a lender to suggest that they would offer you a mortgage. That’s based on the information that we’ve provided to them. We will generate an agreement in principle for First Time Buyers before you go out to look at properties. In summary, a Decision in Principle is a certificate from a lender that says based on the information provided we are likely to give you a mortgage for a certain amount.