Has anyone recently been approved or applied for a Mortgage??

Myself and my husband are currently considering applying for a Mortgage. I know the majority of applications these days seem to be declined so would like to hear from anyone that is applying or has recently been approved. We are FTB's and both in permanent full time jobs on average salaries. We have some savings and will be gifted the rest to make up the deposit but will be looking at 92% LTV most probably.

I would like to hear of other people that have gone through the process...did you apply to the banks directly or go with a broker. Also did you have to have a property picked out when applying?
Any help/tips will be much appreciated. Thanks,

Hi Bling,

Recently applied for a mortgage, back in March. Went with BOI, no issues bar your life story with all the form filling

Only constraint is that we had a property needing to sell, so not 1st time buyers. Mortgage wasn't for huge monies anyway, as we didn't want to "start again" in relation to the mortgage lifetime, which might have had some bearing on our application. Current mortgage that we have is <50% LTV, new mortgage would be similar (assuming our current home goes for what we hope it will).

For the purpose of the mortgage, we needed to identify a house that we wanted to "buy" for the valuation of the selling price of that house. Seemed strange at the time, just think it was for the calculation of LTV for the new house / mortgage.

Usual things come into play with mortgage, savings / history of same. Jobs & length of service, salary fluctuations in recent years. From what I read around, there is also a check of the employer - state of that business, any recent layoffs (in the last 24months) etc. So just for you to be aware of that ... Banks are going into a LOT of detail.

Good luck with it...

Hi Bling,

Myself and my wife were approved for a mortgage earlier this year with BOI and are in the process of finalising the purchase of our new home. After getting approval in principle with BOI, we also applied with AIB who for various reasons decided to turn us down on the principle that they felt that we were not regular savers and also that my wife currently owns an appartment which we intend to rent on the completion of our house purchase. AIB suggested that we try and sell the appartment (which would be absolutely madness in the current environment and lead to negative equity on the current mortgage). They also suggested that we demonstrated an ability to save regularly for a 6 or 7 month period and then reapply.

In our view, BOI are the only ones willing to lend at the moment. AIB clearly don't want to do business from what we can see, as they made no attempt to offer us a reduced loan amount even though we're both in permanent jobs looking at a LTV of around 55%.

Only advice I can offer when shopping about for a mortgage, is to look at the overall loan principle you'll pay back over the term of the mortgage, and not the monthly repayments. Also, if possible shorten the term of your mortgage as again it's cheaper to pay of sooner rather than assuming a longer term (but you probably knew this anyways!!).

Good luck.

bling2010 said:

Myself We have some savings and will be gifted the rest to make up the deposit

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AIB are strict on regular savings so any "gift" to help with deposit won't look good to them. KBC are more interested in certainty and history of employment in my experience. NIB won't go too high on LTV, probably not much more than 70 or 80%. No idea about BOI's appetite, but unless you have a low LTV, they have high interest rates.

In terms of lead time, I found recently that AIB took over 6 weeks to approve and NIB took one week. I believe KBC take one week. No idea about BOI.

I got approved for a mortgage with NIB on a property with an LTV of 80% over a term of 20 years. Had a regular savings history and was borrowing just under 3 times my income so the application was pretty much straightforward. Didn't waste my time with a broker, they can no longer get the best deals as many banks don't want to deal with them. I would definitely have some sort of savings history, even putting by €200pm will show that you're pretty serious. Being gifted money for the deposit would be a bit of a red flag for some lenders. Although apparently, NIB will allow it providing that the people lending the money sign a solicitor's letter saying they have no claim over the money.

The banks are definitely lending, but just to people who they regard as a very safe credit risk. I think you need at least a year to "dress-up" your application. Make sure your statements have are perfect (no bounced direct debits, no dipping into overdraft, a regular direct debit into a savings account, no gambling transactions, etc), also just save like crazy to boost the deposit.

We just got our approval letter from PTSB yesterday. History of overpaying current mortgage, repayments on which are actually more than the new one will be. We also have no other debt and are getting 50% LTV which is under 3 times the only salary in the house. We had one credit card statement from a couple of months ago with an unpaid min amount but a note explaining how that happened (bad organisation on our part, had funds to cover it in accounts, just not the right one, cc usually usually cleared every month) seemed to be sufficient.

Thanks everyone for the replies. It's all very helpful!!