Finding a mortgage

So, you’ve worked all your life (or for the past few years of it, anyway), and now you’re finally in a position to buy a house. Of course, the first thing you do is come here and look at the pretty houses you could have, and that part of the process tends to be quite fun. Personally, I’ve always enjoyed moving house, mainly because it involves a lot of time nosing around inside other people’s homes. Once the fun bit is out of the way, however, you’re then left to deal with the slightly stressful process of getting a mortgage.

And so you find yourself at midnight on a Friday, sitting in front of your computer screen, comparing loans instead of being out gallivanting with your friends, or whatever you’d prefer to be doing. And it’s so hard to work out all the bits and pieces you have to compare and think about. Here are a couple of seemingly obvious tips to get you started, but they’re things lots of people appear to completely overlook! Who knows, maybe you’ll be able to catch up with the gang for that final beer after all...

Shop around
Sure, it’s tempting to just grab the first offer you see, not read the small print and try to get the largest amount of money possible, hoping to pay it all off later. But that’s not exactly fantastic when it comes to financial sense. It’s the sort of thing where you’ll find yourself a year later with no money at all, scrunched up in a ball on your friend’s sofa mewling pathetically about how urgent it seemed to buy your own house at the time... so, shop around. Take a look at all the different places out there, and settle on the one that’s right for you.

Find out your credit rating
This will affect the kind of mortgage you can get, and how readily people will give it to you. There are plenty of places to check your credit score, and once you’ve worked it out (and made yourself a cup of tea to recover from the shock), you’ll have given yourself a reasonable idea of the kind of money and deals you can expect to receive.