Ok, so me on a permanent contract, her one year into a 5 year fixed term contract with good chance of renewal. Anyone been in a similar situation when applying for a mortgage? Some lenders seem to have issues…

5 year fixed term contract, is your OH an MP? 🙂

I wish, we could just use the housing allowance to get a nice cushty pad and she could employ me as her PA 😉

The reality is that she works for a mental health charity, so their posts are funding related.

The other half and I are in a similar situation but the only people who had attractive mortgages and caused a problem were HSBC. Everyone else seemed happy enough and we are both on “fixed term” contracts.

FWIW, and as far as I understand the situation in our cases, employers are legally obliged to make you permanent after 4 years of continuous employment with them unless there is a strong business case not to do so. As businesses can’t allocate funding streams to a person in these circumstances once the money runs out they need to demonstrate why she is the one losing her job and not someone else doing a similar role. So if she has a 5 year contract you can claim it is effectively permanent as they would have to formally sack her. May be worth checking out. More info here.

Cheers for that, I’m starting to panic a bit less now! Appears the main stickler is at the moment she’s one year into it, whilst as soon as she’s a year and a month in it’s fine….

Unfortunately there’s a get out clause with the 4 year thing along the lines of ‘unless a business case can be presented’ which I imgaine would just be ‘if we don;t get funding we can’t pay you.’

5 year fixed term with 4 years to run – she’s probably safer in her job than most people of normal contracts…

Ref mortgages, you’ll just have to look around. Some companies will have blanket bans/higher rates/lower borrowing limits for people not on permanent contracts while others will take a more pragmatic view.

Much as I don’t like them in general, an IFA might be worth a go too as they’ll know which products/banks/etc would be good to look at for your circumstances. Just make sure whatever they’re proposing is not just in their interests.

We had a similar situation when we moved about 2 years ago. We found HSBC and Halifax were both difficult (said things like, it’ll be at the Manager’s discretion once you formally apply), so we ended up with Yorkshire Building Society. Unfortunately we couldn’t find the information easily online so ended up ringing around lots of banks/building societies and having to go in for hour-long meetings just to find out they might not lend to us. It’s annoying because, like Clubber said, she’s probably got more job security than most applicants.

I used to be on 1 year contracts and still got a mortgage…….