Hi,
We bought our house a couple of years ago using both our incomes to get our mortgage. We are with EBS and our mortgage was 4.6 times our joint gross salary. EBS didnt work on straightforward multiples but after stress testing were happy with lending that amount to us. Since then my wife has stopped working (her salary was very small) to look after the kid(s) and our mortgage is now 4.8 times our salary (we have paid a little off and I have had a raise). Even after the recent interest rises (we are on a tracker) we are still saving a few hundred a month and not needing to watch what we spend (we have a low cost lifestyle which i dont think really gets picked up on by lenders).
According to our T&Cs we are supposed to inform EBS of any changes in our circumstances and I am probably going to do so in the next few weeks.
Has anybody had any experience with lenders (in particular EBS) in how they approach this. My feeling is that if we were to re-apply for the mortgage that we already have we wouldnt get it (even though we feel that we are not too stretched). Do the lenders recalculate these things or do they tend to let things go if you are not having problems paying the mortgage.