Looking for feedback on my plan on whether or not it's too ambitious.

conti

GF and I are in mid-30’s. We’ve been saving for a just over a year now, we won’t have enough saved to justify drawing down in time for the BOI 5% cash-back deadline so we’re going to forego it and keep saving until the end of 2019 where we should have just shy of 60k ready for a deposit.

Collectivity we make around 65k, by the time we’re going to apply we may be around the 68K mark taking salary bumps into consideration. I also have a personal savings account where I put in a fixed amount every month and I occasionally dip into it to pay for expenses like car and holidays (we do very modest holidays, generally we find somewhere in Ireland or England to keep costs down).

So we’re pretty much saving everything we can, the only thing that doesn’t go into mortgage savings is just enough to get by. Does this look good or bad in the eyes of the bank when you go to apply for a mortgage?

We’re very occasional drinkers, we’re both into cooking so batch prepping lunches and dinners
is saving us loads, I don’t gamble, I drive my car maybe twice a week so I spend very little on fuel and I have the cheapest tier of insurance (I do well under 5000km per year), basically, my statement history should appear clean of any silly spending. The most of my leisure spending goes on running gear on Amazon and race entry fees. Also I just finished paying off a car loan with no missed payments while depositing to my mortgage savings and paying Dublin rent.

Realistically, I would probably need to qualify for the exemption, if not the 4.5 at least something around 4x or close to it. We would love to have 320k entering the market for a ~310k house and use the remaining for the other expenses.
We're both from families with no money or inheritance so nothing will be gifted; every cent will have been saved by us.

Would having an impeccable saving record count for much towards qualifying for the exemption if I can show I can easily keep up the payments or is it just for very high earners? Or am I just living in a fantasy land?

hanaimai

It looks like you’re mostly doing everything you should be at this stage. One thing I would say is not to dip into your savings at all if possible, and at the very least not in the 6 months before you apply. Otherwise whatever you take out will be subtracted from whatever you put in, meaning you’ve less monthly savings to go towards the affordability assessment.

Exemptions are still a bit of a mystery and it’s hard to say for sure whether anyone would or wouldn’t get one, as all banks seem to have their own criteria for offering an exemption. The larger your deposit (and therefore lower the LTV) the better anyway – it makes you less of a risk for the bank, and you’ll usually get a lower interest rate the lower your LTV is so win-win all around. We were told by one bank we’d need to have significantly larger savings per month to qualify for an exemption – for example, they calculated the amount we would need to show we were saving at least 1400 per month to borrow 3.5 and 2300 per month to borrow 4.5. We’re not renting so can’t say for certain but I’m pretty sure rent can be included in that number e.g. 1300 rent, 1000 savings per month.

conti

hanaimai wrote: »

It looks like you’re mostly doing everything you should be at this stage. One thing I would say is not to dip into your savings at all if possible, and at the very least not in the 6 months before you apply.

There is method to this madness.

I'm generally very careful with my card and pin, but somehow my account was hacked 3 times in 2 years, two of those incidents resulted in hefty amounts of money being stolen from my account. BOI did eventually replace this money but I'm pretty sure it says in the fine print that they don't have to so they just do it for PR reasons.

Since these incidents I try to have as little as possible in my current account, this way my money has an extra level of security. So maybe 3 times a year I'll get something from the savings, but as I said it's just for a holiday and this month is to buy a year of tax and insurance. I probably won't touch it again until xmas or next year.

For sure I'll be mindful of it in the last 6 months before applying and try not to touch it.

hanaimai wrote: »

I’m pretty sure rent can be included in that number

Hopefully this is the case!

missmatty

I used to do that. I kept minimal money in my regular current account, had an easy access savings account and saved into that every month. I took money out of that then a couple of times a year for car expenses and holidays etc. Maybe try to leave a decent float in your current account to cover some of those expenses before the six month period starts? I wish I'd done that, it was very hard going for a while not touching the savings account but I eventually got used to it.

Glass fused light

conti wrote: »

There is method to this madness.

I'm generally very careful with my card and pin, but somehow my account was hacked 3 times in 2 years, two of those incidents resulted in hefty amounts of money being stolen from my account. BOI did eventually replace this money but I'm pretty sure it says in the fine print that they don't have to so they just do it for PR reasons.

Since these incidents I try to have as little as possible in my current account, this way my money has an extra level of security. So maybe 3 times a year I'll get something from the savings, but as I said it's just for a holiday and this month is to buy a year of tax and insurance. I probably won't touch it again until xmas or next year.

For sure I'll be mindful of it in the last 6 months before applying and try not to touch it.



Hopefully this is the case!

If your accounts were hacked more than once i would be looking for the bank to give an explaination of how they think it happened.


And if your zeroing out the current account to savings unless there is a interest benefit or cost, look to open new accounts for holiday and other expected expenditure during the year. you have the "minimum" payment for the house fund and holiday/car/other fund gets the rest. If you have saving in the second fund move back into the house at each period end or push back into the current account to pay expected cost.