Hi

We were about to move house (I have to as my job is moving (they will pay some fees)) but Abbey (our current lender) will now only lend us £98k. We currently have £176k with them (£144 Interest only, £22 Repayment)... we only remortgaged in January '09 and borrowed more at the time (they had no problem lending it then - they even offered more). Our house is worth currently £210 -225k and we were looking to spend circa £200k on a new place (we're moving slightly further north so can get a bit more for our money). My salary is £32.5k my wife is a stay at home mum.

We have a £4.5k redemption fee with Abbey... (didn't really want to waste that kind of money) if we were to move lenders.

Any suggestions?

You are asking for a mortgage of 6 times salary which I doubt you will get but an independent mortgage advisor will tell you who is offering the highest earnings ratio at the moment but you can be sure that it wont be the same lender who is offering the lowest interest rate.

I appreciate that, but they lent it to us in January and I was on less money then!

What I was hoping is someone would have some advice on porting our product, I don't really understand why they want to do a full application again when we are offering to reduce our mortgage by buying a cheaper house!!!

Some mortgages are more portable than others. Variable rate mortgages tend to be more flexible than fixed rate ones but the details of how portable your particular mortgage is will be in the terms and conditions. It would be worth checking the details there before discussing the matter further with Abbey.