‘We will likely lose our dream house because of Kwarteng’s actions’
Frances, 30, works in the healthcare sector and has been trying to sell her house in Cambridge in order to buy a bigger home in Bristol.
In the past couple of weeks the chain for her house sale has collapsed twice, forcing her and her husband into a third attempt to upsize.
“We’ve had multiple buyers drop out, including our buyer’s buyer this week. And now some houses that we lost out on buying have become available again due to people dropping out,” Frances says. “It’s been really manic.”
On Thursday morning, the couple’s offer on a house was accepted. “This property’s chain collapsed previously because our seller’s buyer pulled out. It looks like a lot of people are. Now we have to negotiate a mortgage rate.”
Frances says Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget on Friday, which has sent sterling diving against other currencies and is expected to force interest rates up to nearly 6%, made them drop their budget by £100,000 to a maximum of £750,000 over the course of one week.
More than 40% of available mortgages have been withdrawn from the market over the past few days.
“Since the budget, we’ve been looking at cheaper houses, and in areas further away from Bristol, as the situation has made our original plan rapidly unaffordable,” Frances says. “The new rates are scarily high. We’re taking out job loss insurance because we’re so worried. The house we’re now hoping to buy is in Wells, Somerset, so quite a bit from where we were hoping to buy.
“The higher mortgage rate we will have to pay now will definitely put renovation works and an extension on the back burner.”
Kyle and his partner have been together for nearly 10 years but still live separately with their parents in Hampshire. The couple thought they had finally managed to save
Read more on theguardian.com
