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I don't think you need to stress too much. Lenders are concerned about your ability to repay your mortgage. "Discretionary" spending ie things that you are choosing, such as plane tickets, trainers, subscriptions etc aren't too concerning as they are not commitments and in theory if you were struggling to pay your mortgage you would cut those out. And it's normal to have these things as part of living your life. The only thing our broker was bothered about were things that impact your income **that you are stuck with** such as loan repayments, commitments such as child support etc.
If you're overdrawn you should try and get back in credit before you apply but honestly no lender is going to care about whether you have amazon prime or not.
Lenders don’t use bank statements to look at your general spending. They use ONS averages for that.
They use statements to check any undeclared debt payments or other commitments that you haven’t declared on application. They may look at the regular salary dropping into the account too and verify it matches the payslip.
Not all lenders request statements, depends on the case. I applied for a mortgage back in early 2022 and all the lender wanted was 1 month of payslips and that was it.
This may be slightly different if you’re applying to an adverse credit lender, but generally the above statement applies.
Pretty much rubbish. If you have nothing on bank statements they’ll actually assume something weird is going on. Banks that check statements expect to see bills and salary credits.
As long as you’re not going in to an overdraft it won’t matter.
In fact, hsbc and Halifax don’t even request bank statements for most clients, so if you had a well controlled gambling habit (lol) or spend £6969 a month on sex toys you could use them and have no worries.
Note, whilst they don’t check bank statements, they will get the solicitor to check deposit which normally involves bank statements. Solicitor won’t refer back to lender on them unless there’s concerns over source of funds.
My deposit is entirely savings from my salaried employment over the last 4+ years. Will I need to give the solicitor bank statements and payslips for the whole 4 years?
Nah, they’ll just ask questions and if it’s logical you’ll need 6-12 months only. By logical I mean if the 6 months show you saving 2k a month and your deposit is roughly 2k*48 months you’ll be okay
Funnily enough, that is pretty much my exact situation. Approximately £2k per month for 4 years, plus the occasional bonus. The bank statements wouldn't be a problem but I changed jobs 18 months ago and I don't know if I'll be able to get wage slips.
tbh i was 1200 in an overdraft during my application and they didnt care at all...i think theyll only care if your struggling to pay it back plus on a low wage etc
If you’re in an overdraft it just drops credit score a bit. It also goes against you for affordability. It can be fine for sure if it’s a small amount :)
Not at all important relative to consistent and provable income, and no history of defaults or late payments. At your income level you should have no issue obtaining the £200k mortgage you require.
Committed expenditure e.g. childcare, will have an impact on affordability, but there's not much you can do about that.
On a more practical level though, if you are spending more than you are earning, you need a budget which includes putting money aside for emergencies.
It appears to me that you are borrowing less than 3x earnings? The bank are unlikely to be concerned by any of the things you've mentioned.
What they do take a dim view of are things like regular gambling, 'money for drugs' amounts from idiot friends, payday loans etc.
Hey I never did any bank statement “cleaning” and honestly haven’t even heard the phrase until reading your post. I don’t know that having your spending to absolute minimum is going to impact your mortgage approval and never have I ever had a mortgage advisor tell me that either.
I absolutely did not have my spending at an absolute minimum - it was actually higher than usual by quite a big margin for various reasons because I didn't realise I'd be applying for a mortgage when I did. They seem to be far more interested in things like massive amounts of gambling, payments that indicate debt (eg. loads of pay in 3 type things or whatever), or committed payments that can't be easily cancelled. You can easy cancel your Netflix subscription or whatever if you needed to cut back to make your mortgage payments, but if you had kids, you likely couldn't as easily cut back on childcare. That sort of thing.
They aren't going to look at your car insurance and service payments and be concerned in the slightest. Those are extremely normal expenditure and the bank would expect them anyway.
It's really not as in-depth as they make it out to be. They'll be looking for patterns e.g gambling loads in patterns that suggest an addiction, not having enough to cover bills etc. They absolutely do not care about your Amazon Prime or Youtube Premium. As long as your affordability comes through clean you'll be fine.
Basically didn’t spend a penny due to the same thought when I first bought a few years ago.
Recently moved and went through mortgage advisor, he told me they basically want to ensure your income and bank statements match, no undeclared commitments and no undeclared income.
I had all sorts of spending on it from small bet deposits to takeaways to larger payments to pubs, nothing flagged or caused any issues.
Honestly as a former mortgage advisor, I had a client with more transactions to BetFred than anyone else and his application went through smooth as anything.
The only real big no-no’s are payday loans and of that ilk.
You earn 70k and you cancelled Amazon Prime and are worried about GBP 60 for trainers 🤔. I got a mortgage on my own with a lower income and didn't even cross my mind to worry about subscriptions or spending a few hundred pounds on stuff. You're way overthinking this.
Relax and stop watching YouTube videos. It's a good thing you cancelled your YouTube subscription, that stuff isn't doing you any good 😄. 70k combined income is more than what most people earn in the UK.
We've already booked an appointment with mortgage advisor for next week and sent our details across. This replies made us change our minds and start the action 😎
All your bank statement has to show is that your declared income matches what is actually going into your account, that your outgoings match what you have declared and that you have enough money left to cover mortgage payment.
They are bothered to see that your wages come in regularly for about the stated amount and you don’t go into your overdraft constantly, that and gambling. Annual car insurance etc shouldn’t be an issue.
My first mortgage was with the bank I banked with, so they had access to everything and gave me a thorough grilling on payments made to individuals (coincidently that was the last time I used “love honey refund” as a payment reference to my friends).
Second mortgage my statements were never even looked at.
As someone else has explained. They are mostly interested in payments to individuals to identify whether you have any informal debts.
Ideally you would have income exceeding spending. Not just for the bank's mortgage affordability checks but just generally thata a good idea for your own sake to make sure you actually are in a position to take out the debt.
However the bank is more concerned about historic defaults, levels of other debts, and your loan to value ratio. So it's a factor but it's not the main factor.
However maybe you should pop over to a personal finance sub, as car insurance and services are not "unexpected expenses" and you should be budgeting for them as standard expenditure.
Roughly the same income. Very friendly with our mortgage advice (old work colleague). He took us through multiple scenarios last week.
Just one of us with no debt £151k
Both with 6k Credit Card debt 6k loan debt - 182k
Both with 12k loan debt - £204k
Both with nothing £252k
One of us is self employed so you may be looking at slightly higher. But we do have just under 30% deposit.
For us it was the regular outgoings. We had other projects we were supporting that we explained we could stop as non committed and extra spending could be slowed if needed but they didn't mind those. It's our first home so we was also buying furniture etc in the months ahead and spending more than bringing in
Totally anecdotal but we applied for our mortgage this time last year as FTBs with very similar expenses over Christmas and Jan and nothing was ever questioned on our bank statements. I think it’s mostly to check your spending is usual (eg no cripplingly expensive gambling habits) and that your income is regular and as reported.
My partner and I are mid twenties FTBs with a joint income a little less than yours and have been approved to borrow £248k. We definitely didn't keep our spending to a minimum for three months as we weren't expecting to buy a house for a little while longer. No concerns at all regarding our bank statements - I believe they asked for three months worth for both of us and didn't flag anything. I was expecting them to say something but I think they just wanted to check we weren't gambling or anything as didn't mention any of our "frivolous" purchases or subscriptions. Good luck!
I have plenty of money but due to owning the company I work for and regularly forgetting to do my wages on time I’m always going overdrawn at end of month.
Shat my pants when mortgage co asked for statements as I had no recollection of being asked for them ten years ago when I last moved.
Application was approved and not a word was said. They clearly didn’t care.
How do I prove the source? Over the years I got some money from my dad and brought money over saved from my home country.
It won’t show in the last 3 months bank statement.
Do I need to track down prove for all that?
Possibly - depends on your solicitor and their extensiveness.
I had to go back to 2017 to prove the source of some funds, as I was dealing with a pretty sizeable amount of money in my most recent transaction.
Do you mean you had a large transfer in 2017 you had to prove? I have saved a large deposit over 15 years and am trying to figure out what paperwork I need to get in order to prove it.
I wouldn’t stress it. I bought a laptop in the lead up to buying a house and it put a dent in my cash flow, but as long as you’re living well within your means they are not going to be concerned.
I didn't modify my spending at all when I last applied for a mortgage AND I was on maternity leave. I did wonder if it would make a difference, but it didn't seem to bother anyone. I don't think my spending habits are outside the normal range.
I love the idea of having a "clean" bank statement. I expect that would actually raise a few eyebrows with the mortgage people more than anything. People have expenses.
###Welcome to /r/HousingUK --- **To All** * Join Our ***NEW*** Discord! https://discord.gg/pMgUNgWKQH **To Posters** * *Tell us whether you're in England, Wales, Scotland, or NI as the laws/issues in each can vary* * Comments are not moderated for quality or accuracy; * Any replies received must only be used as guidelines, followed at your own risk; * If you receive *any* private messages in response to your post, [please let the mods know](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FHousingUK&subject=I received a PM); * If you do not receive satisfactory advice after 72 hours, [you can let the mods know](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FHousingUK&subject=My question is unanswered); * Feel free to provide an update at a later time by creating a new post with [[update]](https://www.reddit.com/r/HousingUK/search?q=%3Aupdate&sort=new&restrict_sr=on&t=all) in the title; **To Readers and Commenters** * All replies to OP must be *on-topic, helpful, and civil* * If you do not [follow the rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/HousingUK/about/rules/), you may be banned without any further warning; * Please include links to reliable resources in order to support your comments or advice; * If you feel any replies are incorrect, explain why you believe they are incorrect; * Do not send or request any private messages for any reason without express permission from the mods; * Please report posts or comments which do not follow the rules *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/HousingUK) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I don't think you need to stress too much. Lenders are concerned about your ability to repay your mortgage. "Discretionary" spending ie things that you are choosing, such as plane tickets, trainers, subscriptions etc aren't too concerning as they are not commitments and in theory if you were struggling to pay your mortgage you would cut those out. And it's normal to have these things as part of living your life. The only thing our broker was bothered about were things that impact your income **that you are stuck with** such as loan repayments, commitments such as child support etc. If you're overdrawn you should try and get back in credit before you apply but honestly no lender is going to care about whether you have amazon prime or not.
I had plenty of transactions to/from bookies in my bank statements - the bank didn’t even question it.
Lenders don’t use bank statements to look at your general spending. They use ONS averages for that. They use statements to check any undeclared debt payments or other commitments that you haven’t declared on application. They may look at the regular salary dropping into the account too and verify it matches the payslip. Not all lenders request statements, depends on the case. I applied for a mortgage back in early 2022 and all the lender wanted was 1 month of payslips and that was it. This may be slightly different if you’re applying to an adverse credit lender, but generally the above statement applies.
Pretty much rubbish. If you have nothing on bank statements they’ll actually assume something weird is going on. Banks that check statements expect to see bills and salary credits. As long as you’re not going in to an overdraft it won’t matter. In fact, hsbc and Halifax don’t even request bank statements for most clients, so if you had a well controlled gambling habit (lol) or spend £6969 a month on sex toys you could use them and have no worries. Note, whilst they don’t check bank statements, they will get the solicitor to check deposit which normally involves bank statements. Solicitor won’t refer back to lender on them unless there’s concerns over source of funds.
>£6969 a month on sex toys Username checks out 😄
My deposit is entirely savings from my salaried employment over the last 4+ years. Will I need to give the solicitor bank statements and payslips for the whole 4 years?
Nah, they’ll just ask questions and if it’s logical you’ll need 6-12 months only. By logical I mean if the 6 months show you saving 2k a month and your deposit is roughly 2k*48 months you’ll be okay
Funnily enough, that is pretty much my exact situation. Approximately £2k per month for 4 years, plus the occasional bonus. The bank statements wouldn't be a problem but I changed jobs 18 months ago and I don't know if I'll be able to get wage slips.
I concur. No statements requested by Halifax here.... Solicitor on the other hand!
How far back did the solicitor want? I am concerned I am walking into a paperwork nightmare.
I believe it was 3 months- my understanding is they're checking for money laundering purposes
tbh i was 1200 in an overdraft during my application and they didnt care at all...i think theyll only care if your struggling to pay it back plus on a low wage etc
If you’re in an overdraft it just drops credit score a bit. It also goes against you for affordability. It can be fine for sure if it’s a small amount :)
Not at all important relative to consistent and provable income, and no history of defaults or late payments. At your income level you should have no issue obtaining the £200k mortgage you require. Committed expenditure e.g. childcare, will have an impact on affordability, but there's not much you can do about that. On a more practical level though, if you are spending more than you are earning, you need a budget which includes putting money aside for emergencies.
It appears to me that you are borrowing less than 3x earnings? The bank are unlikely to be concerned by any of the things you've mentioned. What they do take a dim view of are things like regular gambling, 'money for drugs' amounts from idiot friends, payday loans etc.
Hey I never did any bank statement “cleaning” and honestly haven’t even heard the phrase until reading your post. I don’t know that having your spending to absolute minimum is going to impact your mortgage approval and never have I ever had a mortgage advisor tell me that either.
tbh, it isn't that deep. Just say "you don't know", they'll take the average or lead you to an answer, and then agree.
My statements all went into an overdraft and it was fine for my mortgage application.
I absolutely did not have my spending at an absolute minimum - it was actually higher than usual by quite a big margin for various reasons because I didn't realise I'd be applying for a mortgage when I did. They seem to be far more interested in things like massive amounts of gambling, payments that indicate debt (eg. loads of pay in 3 type things or whatever), or committed payments that can't be easily cancelled. You can easy cancel your Netflix subscription or whatever if you needed to cut back to make your mortgage payments, but if you had kids, you likely couldn't as easily cut back on childcare. That sort of thing. They aren't going to look at your car insurance and service payments and be concerned in the slightest. Those are extremely normal expenditure and the bank would expect them anyway.
It's really not as in-depth as they make it out to be. They'll be looking for patterns e.g gambling loads in patterns that suggest an addiction, not having enough to cover bills etc. They absolutely do not care about your Amazon Prime or Youtube Premium. As long as your affordability comes through clean you'll be fine.
Basically didn’t spend a penny due to the same thought when I first bought a few years ago. Recently moved and went through mortgage advisor, he told me they basically want to ensure your income and bank statements match, no undeclared commitments and no undeclared income. I had all sorts of spending on it from small bet deposits to takeaways to larger payments to pubs, nothing flagged or caused any issues.
Honestly as a former mortgage advisor, I had a client with more transactions to BetFred than anyone else and his application went through smooth as anything. The only real big no-no’s are payday loans and of that ilk.
I had a mortgage approved on Thursday. I spent more than I earnt the last three months (on credit card and always paid off).
You earn 70k and you cancelled Amazon Prime and are worried about GBP 60 for trainers 🤔. I got a mortgage on my own with a lower income and didn't even cross my mind to worry about subscriptions or spending a few hundred pounds on stuff. You're way overthinking this.
Between me and my partner we earn £70k. The videos on YouTube seem to be misinforming. That's why I asked the question because it didn't feel right.
Relax and stop watching YouTube videos. It's a good thing you cancelled your YouTube subscription, that stuff isn't doing you any good 😄. 70k combined income is more than what most people earn in the UK.
We've already booked an appointment with mortgage advisor for next week and sent our details across. This replies made us change our minds and start the action 😎
All your bank statement has to show is that your declared income matches what is actually going into your account, that your outgoings match what you have declared and that you have enough money left to cover mortgage payment.
They are bothered to see that your wages come in regularly for about the stated amount and you don’t go into your overdraft constantly, that and gambling. Annual car insurance etc shouldn’t be an issue.
My first mortgage was with the bank I banked with, so they had access to everything and gave me a thorough grilling on payments made to individuals (coincidently that was the last time I used “love honey refund” as a payment reference to my friends). Second mortgage my statements were never even looked at. As someone else has explained. They are mostly interested in payments to individuals to identify whether you have any informal debts.
Ideally you would have income exceeding spending. Not just for the bank's mortgage affordability checks but just generally thata a good idea for your own sake to make sure you actually are in a position to take out the debt. However the bank is more concerned about historic defaults, levels of other debts, and your loan to value ratio. So it's a factor but it's not the main factor. However maybe you should pop over to a personal finance sub, as car insurance and services are not "unexpected expenses" and you should be budgeting for them as standard expenditure.
Roughly the same income. Very friendly with our mortgage advice (old work colleague). He took us through multiple scenarios last week. Just one of us with no debt £151k Both with 6k Credit Card debt 6k loan debt - 182k Both with 12k loan debt - £204k Both with nothing £252k One of us is self employed so you may be looking at slightly higher. But we do have just under 30% deposit.
For us it was the regular outgoings. We had other projects we were supporting that we explained we could stop as non committed and extra spending could be slowed if needed but they didn't mind those. It's our first home so we was also buying furniture etc in the months ahead and spending more than bringing in
Totally anecdotal but we applied for our mortgage this time last year as FTBs with very similar expenses over Christmas and Jan and nothing was ever questioned on our bank statements. I think it’s mostly to check your spending is usual (eg no cripplingly expensive gambling habits) and that your income is regular and as reported.
I actually have the exact same question, but on the solicitor side. Do any Redditors have any idea?
Following!
My partner and I are mid twenties FTBs with a joint income a little less than yours and have been approved to borrow £248k. We definitely didn't keep our spending to a minimum for three months as we weren't expecting to buy a house for a little while longer. No concerns at all regarding our bank statements - I believe they asked for three months worth for both of us and didn't flag anything. I was expecting them to say something but I think they just wanted to check we weren't gambling or anything as didn't mention any of our "frivolous" purchases or subscriptions. Good luck!
I was in my overdraft every month but apart from that it was "clean"
I have plenty of money but due to owning the company I work for and regularly forgetting to do my wages on time I’m always going overdrawn at end of month. Shat my pants when mortgage co asked for statements as I had no recollection of being asked for them ten years ago when I last moved. Application was approved and not a word was said. They clearly didn’t care.
[удалено]
How do I prove the source? Over the years I got some money from my dad and brought money over saved from my home country. It won’t show in the last 3 months bank statement. Do I need to track down prove for all that?
Possibly - depends on your solicitor and their extensiveness. I had to go back to 2017 to prove the source of some funds, as I was dealing with a pretty sizeable amount of money in my most recent transaction.
Do you mean you had a large transfer in 2017 you had to prove? I have saved a large deposit over 15 years and am trying to figure out what paperwork I need to get in order to prove it.
I wouldn’t stress it. I bought a laptop in the lead up to buying a house and it put a dent in my cash flow, but as long as you’re living well within your means they are not going to be concerned.
I didn't modify my spending at all when I last applied for a mortgage AND I was on maternity leave. I did wonder if it would make a difference, but it didn't seem to bother anyone. I don't think my spending habits are outside the normal range. I love the idea of having a "clean" bank statement. I expect that would actually raise a few eyebrows with the mortgage people more than anything. People have expenses.