Apply for a Mortgage - Working more than contracted hours

Hi all,

My GF works in a retail environment within a very successful Irish Company.

She is contracted to work 8 hours per week but without fail will work 20 plus hours.

Speaking with a mortgage advisor in BOI, they said they were not sure if the underwriters would only be able to consider my GF's total gross pay for the contracted 8 hours and nothing else or if they would consider all of her earnings. This is contrary to what they said previously (in fact a lot of what they said in our first meeting was contradicted in our latest meeting).

Now, its not like they are discarding a small amount of gross pay. They are discarding over €10,000. This obviously has a huge knock effect in terms of what we can afford. It's also worth pointing out that last year, she earned over twice her contracted pay even though she only worked 2/3rds of the year. Currently she has almost earned 4 times her contracted pay. So its not like her extra hours are infrequent. Her pay slips back this up. Her employer doesn't even account for these as overtime hours as their overtime rate is not applied to her hourly rate. They only get that once they hit 40 hours.

Has anyone been in the same boat and can advise how this has been handled by BOI and or other banks? I do see where they are coming from though, that she is only guaranteed 8 hours per week.

The banks are right to only take the contracted hours into account. You never know what can happen that could cause the hours to be reduced down to the contracted amount.

BOI are unlikely to budge on it. My OH is in a similar position. I eventually gave up including her on the mortgage as the contract amount added so little while having the second person reduced things. Assuming you aren't married/have kids, check out how much you could get on your own. Because of how the maths works, it is can end up higher if the second income is low.

Thanks for the reply, Ryaner.

I do appreciate the banks position on it, and while frustrating for us, it is prudent of them.

We'll look into the single application. There is also a possibility for her to consolidate those additional hours into a new contract so we'll see what happens I suppose