Finance Q - Ne wmortgage, reduced income?

Here's a curly one...

DP and I want to buy a new house - we are fast outgrowing our current house which was our first home, We bought it when we were both working full-time so looked the part finance wise when it came to getting a mortgage pre-approval.

NOW though, I am concerned we might not be able to borrow as much (we want to borrow more actually) as I am only working part-time. We have no problems meeting our payments and have never missed a beat. So anyone else had any experience and did you get as much $$$?

Edited by alyxw

When we changed homes we had less income (but only one of us working in both cases, so it wasn't half income) but because we had so much equity from our first place the bank was very happy to keep us on. Because we were unsure, we went thru a broker

We did this recently. When we bought our last house three years ago, both DH and I were working FT and with really good salaries. We calculated the mortgage repayments based on that income, and we borrowed almost as much as we could.

DS came along and I stopped working. Fortunately, DH moved jobs and was on the fast track for promotion. Even though our income was reduced by a fair amount with the loss of my salary, we were still ok - we just had a lot less disposable income.

He got offered a promotion in another town, so we had to sell and rebuy. I'm still not working, and his salary is still less than our combined one on our original mortgage application.

Didn't matter at all. Interest rates have dropped, and we have a great relationship with our mortgage guy. We were also lucky enough to make a decent amount of profit on the sale of our Auckland house. Still, our mortgage now is still around $50k more than our old one, and our income never came into question. The bank knows we can service the loan so are fine with it. Our repayments are about the same as the old loan thanks to the lower interest rates.

I think if you are staying with your current bank then it should be fine as they will look at your history with them. If you are thinking of going to someone else then it might come up.