To determine whether you are eligible for a mortgage, a mortgage lender will want to assess a number of different factors before giving their approval to lend to you. Taking out a mortgage generally involves borrowing a significant amount of money over a fairly long period of time. Lenders will want to look at the bigger picture of your personal situation and finances. This is to satisfy themselves that you will be able to afford this commitment.

To help with this assessment, lenders will have their own set of lending criteria. They will apply this to mortgage applications as a guide to determining their appetite to lend. As a borrower, you will generally need to meet these criteria to be eligible for a mortgage from them.

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Going through a divorce or legal separation can be a very difficult and stressful process, even if the separation is amicable between both parties. Untangling personal finances and separating joint assets fairly can be tricky and is often far from straightforward, particularly if you own significant assets such as the matrimonial home. This can be even more difficult and contentious where there are dependent children involved in the relationship. The decision on how to deal with the family home will, in most cases, have an impact on these children in many ways.

Unfortunately, 42% of marriages end in divorce, however one consequence of this statistic is that mortgage lenders are familiar with these types of situations. There are generally options available to you when it comes to refinancing an existing joint mortgage on the family home or getting a new mortgage facility to buy a new home.

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If you have a standard repayment mortgage, you may be able to reduce your monthly payments by extending your mortgage term. Your mortgage term is the length of time that you have agreed to fully repay your mortgage within. The term will have been agreed with you at the time you originally took your mortgage out, or last remortgaged it.

For a long time, a 25-year mortgage term was the standard go-to option. In recent years, however, as the size of the average mortgage has increased, there has been a move towards longer repayment terms in an attempt to make the higher borrowing needed to buy a property more affordable. In fact, data suggests that the number of first-time buyers opting for a mortgage term of between 35 and 40 years has doubled over the past decade.

So, how does extending your mortgage term affect your payments, and is it something you should consider?

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