Apartment swap???

overdar26

hi i have a one bed apartment and live here with my girlfriend i bought just as the property crash happened for 170k have a baby on the way next year and i am looking for a 2+house or apartment to live in....my question is can i sell my apartment now and transfer to a new mortgage with whatever shortfall i have or is house swapping a good idea???? any help very much appreciated thanks :)

seamus

Word on the street is that banks are offering negative equity mortgages (i.e. transferring the shortfall to a new property) on a case-by-case basis to those customers that can afford it. They aren't advertising these, but they are doing them in limited circumstances.

So it's always worth doing your sums and discussing it with your bank if that's the way you want to go.

House-swapping isn't really that feasible in Ireland because the process requires that the mortgage is cleared before the house can be transferred, so if you're in negative equity either bank might flat-out refuse to do a straight swap.

Your other option, which most people tend to go for, is to rent a bigger property and rent out your existing one. Little bit of a pain because you have to declare the income and pay for maintenance on the rented property, but you also get the benefit of renting a bigger property, which may have less overheads than owning a smaller one.

overdar26

thanks seamus have been doing a little research on boards and online also and everything you say seems to correspond with this we both have started to save heavily and in the mean time clear of credit card and credit union loans so as when we present to the bank for the ne mortgage itll be all in our favour thanks for your help