I bought a small terracced house in Yorkshire (near my dad's place) almost two years ago which I 'live' in while working in London, as I wanted to get on the housing ladder and couldn't afford what I wanted in London at the time. I bought for 80K with a 95% mortgage, and it is now worth around 95K, with about 74K left on the mortgage, i.e. about 20K equity I think.

As I said, I really wanted to buy in London, and I realistically am looking at 250K for what I require. I have been working to the assumption that I need 16% to make this possible, i.e. 15% for a deposit, and 1% for stamp duty, which works out to 40K.

I will be in the position later this year where I will have 20K saved. My question is, would it a complete non-starter (or ok?) to borrow 20K against my 1st current house via a secured loan with a 3rd party, i.e. separate from 1st house's mortgage company? This would give me the 40K I need. If I then went to another (4th party) separate mortgage company to finance the 2nd house, would this count against me, or not? Surely as far as the mortgage company for the 2nd house would be concerned, I'd be putting up the 15% at no risk to them, and only be asking for the 85% from them. Or does it not work this way?

As far as monthly repayments, I'm not concerned about that, just the starting costs. The 1st house is easily rentable (yes, I should inform the 1st house mortgage company about that, but is nothing to do with the '2nd' house, which I *will* be living in). The repayments for the 2nd house would be around £1400 (?? repayment mortgage?), and I would be renting a room out. I *could* cover the almost 2K per month on paper anyway, I'm a company director with over 3 years accounts, and make about 80K pre-tax per year.

What I want to know, is this a valild route to raise deposit capital, or is it a no-no? If I absoutely have to sell the 1st house to buy the 2nd as a straight 'move', then I will, but I'd rather not sell it.

Any comments? Thanks.

To be honest, you're going to need a deposit of 25% really now for property - and I don't think you'd get much in London for £80k-£100k.

As for being a company director - heh, then like me you should know that the banks have great difficulty in determing a director's income when they only look at taxable income as "guaranteed". Previously, may not have been an issue - but nowadays lenders have gotten really tight.

Best of luck, but to me honest, I think you are trying to take on far too much too soon - look to build the equity in your current property, and consider the fact that the property market is in a slump - look to whether that first, perhaps.

2c.