Foster caring requires enough energy, flexibility, and resources at the best of times, let alone when you’re searching for a mortgage. Finding the perfect home with the perfect mortgage means investing your precious time and effort alongside your day-to-day work life. This investment means you’ve got to strategise, ask the right questions, and find the right professionals to help make your deal a reality. The good thing is that, much like foster caring, getting a mortgage can be extremely rewarding, and a source of huge personal fulfilment.
What Issues do Foster Carers Face?
Mortgage Hunting While Foster Caring
The job itself presents different challenges at different stages of the mortgage process. It’s well worth doing plenty of preparation, discussion, and negotiation to find your perfect foster carer mortgage; however, these stages mean meetings, paperwork, and careful contemplation.
Mortgage hunters in conventional employment conduct these tasks outside of their workday, meeting their brokers before work, going to meetings on weekends and evenings, and printing forms on their lunch breaks. Of course, foster caring can be more flexible but far less predictable, with things like childcare, school runs, and family emergencies.
Finding an Understanding Mortgage Broker
Speaking of predictability, that’s exactly what mortgage lenders love. The relative unpredictability of foster caring, both in terms of income and expenses, creates an obstacle between carers and many high-street lenders. The fact that fostering income links directly to expenses and dependents requires expertise to navigate. Not all lenders possess that expertise. There are, however, plenty of experienced lenders who handle mortgages for foster carers, so it’s just about finding the right one for you.
Financial Planning
Alongside the lender’s expertise, foster carer mortgages require robust and flexible financial research on the borrower’s part too. Expenses and income vary for foster carers, depending on the size, age, and location of their foster family. Foster caring lenders who map these finances out while budgeting for mortgage payments, mortgage fees, and things like surveys and conveyances stand the best chance of securing a great mortgage and a great home. If you’re reading this, you’ve already made a start.
Common Questions
Can I Get a Mortgage as a Foster Carer?
Yes you can! Once you meet the right lender, you’ll find all kinds of mortgage options with different terms, rates, and monthly repayments. This diversity means you’ll figure out what you can afford every month and find a solution to match your budget.
What Kind of Finances do I Need?
In many ways, mortgages for foster carers are very similar to standard deals. Standard mortgages require a deposit of at least 5% of the property’s total value, and the same goes for foster carers. You’ll also have to prove that you can keep up monthly mortgage payments throughout the term.
What Kind of Documentation do I Need?
Standard mortgage lenders ask for your salary, your most recent payslip, and evidence of steady employment for 3-6 months. As a foster carer, you’ve got to find your own equivalent to get your deal over the line. This usually looks like remittance slips, bank balances, and confirmation from your foster agency or local authority.
How do I Find the Right Mortgage Lender?
Lenders make more money the more you spend. Mortgage brokers, however, make it their job to find you the best deal. With plenty of experience and a wide panel of lenders, the right broker can find you the right deal, no matter how niche your requirements are.
The content of this post was accurate at the point of publication and is subject to change.