Despite my best intentions, it was inevitable that raising £20,000 to buy my ex out of our joint mortgage was an optimistic endeavour at best. Right from the beginning I had to factor in a more realistic plan: remortgaging the house for the value of the outstanding mortgage with our joint provider plus the £20k for Karl.
However, because of my circumstances (“single” parent with two kids and all of the associated outgoings) not all mortgage companies were willing to give me a chance, and those that did had caps on what they were willing to lend. Working with an IFA, I finally settled on a 3 year fixed interest mortgage with Natwest… but at a price. The mortgage had a setup fee of £995 which I had to pay up front, as adding it to the balance of the mortgage would have pushed me into another lending bracket which Natwest weren’t willing to go up to.
I don’t tend to have £995 just sitting around in my back pocket to cough up on a whim, but thankfully my enthusiasm for raising the £20,000 on my own meant that I had some savings (through a combination of savvy saving and donations from a handful of fabulous folk reading here) and I was able to draw on the money raised to cover that fee and the subsequent fees charged by the solicitor to complete the transfer of equity on the house from Karl to myself.
As of this week the transfer of equity was completed, and this morning the fees were transferred to the relevant recipients (old mortgage company / Karl). My remortgage is complete: my house is now mine (and Natwest’s)
So what’s next? Time to dust off my plan to be mortgage free in 5 years of course…
05 Feb at 8:21 pm
Well done! Mortgage free in 5 years sounds ambitious as well but I have a feeling you might pull it off. :)
06 Feb at 9:28 am
Congrats Jem!
06 Feb at 8:30 pm
This is amazing, I’m so happy for you!
08 Feb at 6:49 pm
You star!!! That must be an awesome feeling knowing it’s yours.