Hi,
my wife and I have decided we want to upsize and buy our second and all going well final home. We bought in 2016 a 3 bed end of terrace new build approx 95sq metres for €115,000 in a commutable town about 45 mins from Cork City/Killarney and about 60mins to Limerick.
over the past few years we’ve got married and have 2 beautiful kids. Since our second arrived last year we’ve found the house small. Storage, lack of a utility room, kitchen size/living area, rooms aren’t huge for the likes of good storage going forward. For example a double bed would nearly take up all of the box room. Also no area in our kitchen can we put a dishwasher(no need anyway but just an example of the size) when we bought this house we had a combined gross income of €40k. Now that’s approx €85000 now herself is a term time worker so will need to sign on for 8 weeks of the year, I’m not sure is this and child benefit included as income?
so since February this year we’ve committed to clearing a couple of small loans and clear our credit card balance.
we do have one pcp contracted car which was needed last year so that won’t be cleared. We also have a home improvement loan which ive topped up to clear the small loans, probably bad practice but I’ve cut my monthly payments by €75 a month by only paying the home improvement loan for an extra year.
So as a whole our car and loan a month together will be €940, current mortgage monthly is €415 balance of €95000 left to pay, house valuation recently €215-230k if we were to sell now. That’s variable of course and as time goes by our mortgage balance gets lower as well. We’re now saving €520 a month into our credit union and also I set up a goal saver account with BOI of €200 a month. So there’s a possibility that we could have gross profit €120-135k if we were to sell.
a question I do have is with this considerable gross profit we’d have plenty for a 20% deposit with plenty left over. Is there a way of an agreed with a bank that we clear our home improvement loan as part of a mortgage package? Especially if we were to stay put with BOI, obviously not ideal but as an ease of stress it might be the best way.
also we have childcare costs currently of about €650 a month(won’t be in crèche once the wife is off during summer Easter etc) that figure is to increase in September as we don’t qualify for NCS only the minimum amount of 50c per hour. So it’ll mean that €650 will turn into €850 roughly. Is there a way of hiding this by ways of paying cash? We pay weekly by DD, it would be say 3 different cash withdrawals and then cash at the end of the week. Is that bad practice?
I hope some here will have some of the answers to the questions which are wide ranging. Thanks Cork2021