A First-Time Buyer's Guide to Getting a Mortgage

Before you look at a single property, it's worth understanding roughly what you could borrow. Lenders typically offer somewhere around 4 to 5 times your annual income, though this varies depending on your outgoings, credit history, any dependants, and the lender's own criteria — our affordability calculator gives you a rough starting figure in seconds.

Your deposit matters just as much as your income. The bigger it is relative to the property price (a lower loan-to-value, or LTV), the better the rates you'll typically be offered. Most lenders ask for a minimum of 5–10%, but rates generally improve noticeably at each threshold from 15%, 25% and beyond.

The deposit is usually the headline figure, but it isn't the only cost of buying a home. It's worth setting money aside for the following, so nothing catches you out in the final weeks before completion.

An Agreement in Principle (AIP) — sometimes called a Decision in Principle — is a statement from a lender showing how much they'd likely lend you, based on a quick credit check and some basic details. Most estate agents will expect to see one before they'll take your offer seriously, so it's worth sorting early, ideally before you start viewing properties seriously.

Getting an AIP is quick, and with most lenders it uses a soft credit search that won't affect your credit file — though a handful of lenders still carry out a hard search at this stage, and we'll always tell you which applies before going ahead. It's not a guarantee of a mortgage offer, but it gives you a realistic budget to shop with and shows sellers you're a serious buyer.

Most first-time buyers choose a fixed-rate mortgage, which locks your interest rate for a set period (commonly 2, 3 or 5 years) so your payments stay predictable regardless of what happens in the wider market. Tracker and variable-rate mortgages move with the Bank of England base rate or the lender's own rate — potentially cheaper at times, but less predictable month to month.

You'll also choose a term length, typically 25–35 years, sometimes longer. A longer term lowers your monthly payment but increases the total interest you'll pay over the life of the mortgage — it's a genuine trade-off worth talking through properly rather than simply defaulting to the longest option available to keep payments low.

If your deposit is smaller than you'd like, a few schemes and product types can help. Shared Ownership lets you buy a share of a property (often 25–75%) and pay rent on the rest, usually through a housing association, with the option to buy further shares over time ('staircasing'). Guarantor mortgages let a family member support your application with their savings or property, sometimes helping you borrow more or with a smaller deposit than you'd manage alone.

Government and lender-backed schemes for smaller deposits change fairly regularly — Help to Buy, for example, closed to new applications some years ago, and other schemes have come and gone since. Rather than relying on anything you've read online, we'll tell you exactly what's currently available and whether you'd qualify.

Once a seller accepts your offer, a fairly standard sequence of events kicks in on the way to getting your keys. Timelines vary depending on the chain and how quickly everyone involved moves, but this is roughly how it typically unfolds.

1. 1

   Instruct a solicitor

   They'll handle the legal side — searches, contracts, and liaising with the seller's solicitor.

2. 2

   Book your survey

   Beyond the lender's valuation, an independent survey flags any structural issues worth knowing about before you commit.

3. 3

   Submit your full application

   We package everything up and submit it to the lender, along with your protection planning.

4. 4

   Underwriting and valuation

   The lender reviews your case in full and values the property to confirm it supports the loan.

5. 5

   Receive your mortgage offer

   Once approved, you'll get a formal, written mortgage offer from the lender.

6. 6

   Exchange and completion

   Contracts are exchanged (the point of no return), then completion follows — the big day itself.

A handful of avoidable mistakes account for most of the stress we see first-time buyers go through — most of them are easy to sidestep once you know to look out for them.