Now that mortgage lenders are looking at a range of outgoings,would it be better to reduce the interest rate on my loan?Q My boyfriend and I are looking to buy a house towards the conclude of this year. He has a good deposit and we each earn around £50000, so we are in a strong position. The challenge is that I still have around £15000 in debts from education. I am overpaying this loan, and so I expect it would be approximately half that amount when we apply for a mortgage in the autumn. The problem is that the loan I have has a really high interest rate of around 12.5% because I took it out when I earned significantly less. I know that mortgage lenders are interested in how much disposable income you have,and refinancing would allow me to reduce my outgoings. I wouldn't be able to refinance until a few months' time as the change in my salary is fairly recent. So, should I refinance the loans within six months of when we'd ideally like to apply for a mortgage (which seems risky in terms of credit history) or maintain the loan at this dreadful rate, or but then have a lower disposable income when we apply for a mortgage. What would you recommend? CRContinue reading...
Source: theguardian.com