Hi, we have recently approached HSBC for a re-mortgage on our current property. Basically we have a property worth approx. £180,000 and a mortgage of £37,400 remaining, for just over 10 years.

What we wanted to do was re-mortgage & borrow an additional £5,000 for home improvements over 10 years. The monthly payment quoted was £409, only £4 over our current mortgage payment with our current lender, including the additional £5,000.

To cut a long story short & after 3 visits to the bank where we had to justify & verify absolutely everything on our bank statement, including £5.40 a month pet insurance, they turned us down. They would not even lend us the £37,400.

Our position is that my husband earns approx. £31,000 a year & I am self-employed with less than 3 years accounts. Therefore, anything I earn cannot be included in the equation. We do have two credit cards & a loan payment totallying £176 a month (all in my name - my husband does not have a credit card, mine is used instead!) which seems to have gone against us - probably because they are in my name and for their purposes I am unwaged. That being said, they included child benefit & child tax credits into the equation, which totals £170 so that effectively cancels out these payments. Basically they said that my husband has three depedants, myself & our two children and we should wait until I have 3 years accounts. The man we saw at HSBC was more than helpful & spent an hour arguing our case with the underwriters, but to no avail!

I was wondering whether anyone else had experienced this problem? I am now unsure as to what to do, because I have only been self employed for 18 months & need 3 years accounts to be able to be included on the mortgage.

The HSBC was offering a 'fee free' deal which suited us perfectly, if we had to pay fees of £800 upwards this would cancel out any benefit we would gain from achieving a lower interest rate.

I know that banks have severely cut back on their lending, but this seems a bit extreme.

I should say that I have banked with HSBC for 26 years, with a joint account for 19 years & we have held a mortgage with various banks and building societies for 22 years, never missed a payment and have a near perfect credit rating.

Any advice on what to do next would be appreciated? I am wondering if it might be best to stay with our current lender, even though their SVR is high & take out a home improvement loan.

Many thanks for any advice you are able to give.