I’ll brain dump some stuff here, although take it with a grain of Australian salt…
If your borrowing figure is based on a multiplier of your income, then you have a clear two step process in front of you:
Find the place that offers the best multiplier that you trust.
Increase your income.
It sounds like you’re already doing 1. and it should be fairly straightforward, so it’s time to start work on 2.
Even though I already know a bit more about your situation than most, the obvious thing that should jump out to most people is the mention of your wife reinvesting most of the profits into the business.
Is that profits after paying herself a wage (or however it works with sole trader businesses in the UK), or before?
Because if she’s not paying herself a wage out of the proceeds, then that’s number one problem which will reduce your income on paper. Even a £5-10k extra on paper will open up your opportunities to bigger and better houses.
The other thing is the profits, more profits equals more ability to pay her. So is the business running well, are you doing everything to maximise profits? Based on the stock levels that I’ve seen you holding, I would say that no, you’re not doing that. Imagine what the books would look like without the £££’s of unsold units sat in your office. If you’re looking to buy a place, the business absolutely needs to step up a gear, away from being a hobby.
Brain dump over. Now back to looking at my mortgages and how sad they make me.
Yeh already trying to do 1, and by doing that if we can borrow X amount then if we need to save more for a deposit to match we will work towards that as well.
We’ve learnt more over the last year. Ordering/getting less of items manufactured. Always in the beginning she would order through someone who would essentially contact the factories on your behalf, now we go direct reducing the costs. It’s more so that the self employed earnings might just help boost our borrowing power rather my income supporting us all. And getting a mortgage when your self employed is much harder as sales/work are not the same month on month.
the cracks/gaps are def the kind that’ll eject you, was gonna buy some bondo but remembered i had a tub of polyfilla kicking around though im not sure how well it’ll fare longevity wise
I’m not sure if this has been delved into because I’ve not read all the replies, but my broker works out what we can afford, with a view of still being able to live “comfortably” i.e. have an emergency fund equal or exceeding 3 months worth of income, and make regular contributions to further savings, go on holidays, be able to afford hobbies, allow for force majeur incidents that’d otherwise screw you financially. That might be why he’s gone for a lower figure. For context, we used him when buying our first home, and he gave us a speculative budget of around £140k max, we bought a house for £145k and have been able to live more than comfortably and get married in the time since then. Now we’re looking for our second home and he’s been a lot more generous with the figures because he knows in greater depth our spending and saving habits.
Edit: for the £1000 we’ve spent on using his services twice (once for our original mortgage, and then 5 years after to remortgage after the end of our fixed term) he’s more than paid for himself, and we’ll definitely use his service again when we move hopefully later this year.
On house shit. I accepted an offer and had an offer accepted pretty much the same time. We sold ours as no chain so we’ve had to move out and move in with my parents in law.
We’ve been badgering people all month about wtf is happening with the house we are buying. Told estate agents and solicitors repeatedly get a fucking swerve on because we’re living out of a suitcase and the cats are costing 20 bastard quid a day.
We got a call from the state agent asking US what’s the hold up. Erm… Weve been calling and asking you that 15 times this month.
Rang the solicitor who told use they are waiting on some documents from us as she posted out some massive pack a few weeks ago.
In all the emails we’ve sent since then we’ve asked ‘is there anything more we can do’ and this is literally the first we’ve heard about this.
The people buying our house think WE’VE been dragging our feet, we’ve thought they were dragging their feet and it turns out it was some dozy cunt solicitor who has posted out loads of sensitive personal stuff to God knows where.
She can’t even put the shit together so I can physically go over and sign whatever it is by the weekend because she’s a dozy lying cunt.
It turns out my wife and the guy we are buying from are doing jury service on the same place in the same time and we both wanted to get it down by then (the 14th) but there’s basically no chance now.
My Mum has a nice detached 4 bed, double garage, garden’s not massive but nice, done up well inside, decent area, about 5 miles outside of Oxford. £675k – it’s absolutely mental.
Don’t think I’d ever want to live in an out of town house with fields and shit like that. Just sounds like a load of grief to maintain and it’s a bit of a sitting duck for burglars if you go away.
It’s super safe here. Accidentally left the front door wide open yesterday when I went for lunch. Came back and was like fuck - but nothing had gone although you see about 2ks computer equipment the minute you open that door haha.
Just sold* my 2 bedroom flat for £610k. It’s tiny but has a garage and new appliances. It’s kind of mental what that will buy you in the midlands/north/Wales.
maybe get 2 for that price, if you fancy a project