Help for Homebuying

Buying your first home is probably the biggest and most involved financial transaction you will ever undertake. After years of saving, you borrow an eye-wateringly large amount of money and enter a process which appears to have its own language. You may face additional costs, such as stamp duty, costs for a lawyer or surveyor and, alarmingly, even if you do everything right, there is a chance it could all fall through for a whole host of reasons. It is, therefore, no surprise that buying a home is frequently ranked in life’s top five “most stressful experiences”.

If you then consider that most first-time buyers have never had any sort of education on ‘how to buy a home’ and stumble through the process learning as they go, it is a wonder that anyone manages to get a foot on the property ladder in the first place! However, the sense of pride, security, satisfaction and, sometimes, relief buying your first home brings, can make it all worthwhile and is why people are amassing small fortunes for deposits, either by saving diligently for several years, or with help from ‘the bank of Mum and Dad”; the UK’s 9th biggest lender! (Source Mortgage Advice Bureau).

And yet, as a recent survey by Aldermore Bank found, having a deposit by no means guarantees that you will receive a mortgage offer, with nearly half of prospective first-time buyers estimated to have been rejected for a mortgage since the Covid-19 pandemic began. Of course, Government initiatives such as the 5% deposit mortgage guarantee scheme may help going forward, but it is clearly a difficult time to be trying to get on the housing ladder with 62% of prospective first-time buyers currently feeling that buying a home is unachievable.

That is why Better with Money has developed a webinar for those who dream of buying a property for the first time, as well as relatives who would like to find out more about how they might help. Covering important areas such as ‘the reasons mortgages are declined’, ‘the best way to save for a deposit’, ‘current “help to buy” initiatives’, and ‘what you can do to ensure your best possible chance of getting a mortgage’, Better with Money provides financial education in the workplace to bring money matters to life in an interesting and accessible way and equip employees with the financial knowledge and tools they need to get a foot on the first rung of the property ladder – and one step closer to shopping for paint samples and soft furnishings.

If you would like to find out more about the courses Better with Money provides, please contact us.