Inside Money: First Rung
 
Presenter: Lesley Curwen
Listener: Emma Koubayssi
Producer:  Jennifer Clarke 

Tx: 	Saturday 19 August 2006 1204
Rpt: 	Monday 21 August 2006 1502 

THIS IS A TRANSCRIPT OF THE LONGER REPEATED VERSION

SOUND OF PIPE MUSIC 

CURWEN: 	Welcome to Inside Money which this week is all about 
property. I’m in Glasgow and in fact I’m surrounded by hundreds of 
tourists enjoying the international festival of piping. Well Glasgow, like 
many part of the UK has seen rising house prices over the last few years, 
and that has put the squeeze on people trying to get their foot onto the 
first rung of the property ladder
 
KOUBAYSSI:  	There’s three bedrooms upstairs, and we’ve got a 
nice big bathroom as well, which we all share. 

CURWEN:	That’s Emma Koubayssi, in the rented house she shares 
in the Gorbals area of Glasgow

KOUBAYSSI:  	This is my room, which is really nice, I really 
like it. There’s enough room for a big double bed and lots of other 
furniture. And when it’s sunny, or even in the winter time I’ve got big 
French doors 

CURWEN: 	Emma is 26, a graduate who works in public relations. 
She’s used to sharing her living-space, but recently she’s decided she 
wants to own her own home.

KOUBAYSSI:  	I used to not mind renting, it suited my situation 
and I didn’t really want the responsibility of a mortgage and having to 
pay all the kind of bills you would if you owned a property. But I now 
realise that actually the kind of monthly outgoings I pay on rent per 
month could actually benefit me rather than going into someone else’s 
pocket and them having a lovely property at the end of the day to sell 
and make money on.

CURWEN: 	But the truth is, Emma is on a fairly low income and she 
has some debts too, which means she hasn’t managed to save enough 
for a deposit. Her experience as a wannabe home-owner is going to 
sound very familiar to other first time buyers – even though house 
prices and wages can be very different across various regions of the UK. 
Let’s get down to the nitty gritty of  Emma’s monthly budget. 
	
KOUBAYSSI:  	I currently earn £17,000 a year and that kind of 
roughly comes out at about £1,100 take-home pay. At the moment I’ve 
got a really good deal. I pay £350 for my rent my bills all inclusive. 
Then I pay about £230 per month to my debts, the rest I spend on gym 
and travel and living expenses.

CURWEN:		To get a home, she might have to borrow a huge amount 
compared to her annual wages. But there were some factors in her 
favour –  her stepfather was prepared to invest 20 thousand pounds in a 
flat with her. Added to that, first homes can be much cheaper in 
Glasgow than in some other parts of the UK. Emma really resented 
paying out money in rent if she could buy, so she decided to join us at 
Inside Money to find out if she can afford it.

KOUBAYSSI:  	I would like to think what my options are, 
whether they’re viable and realistic, whether I’m in a position to buy a 
property now, whether it’s the type of property I would want to buy. At 
the moment I’ve got lots of things buzzing about my head, but I think 
actually some expert advice would maybe give me more direction in 
what I’m doing with this.

CURWEN:		We were going to present Emma with a number of 
possible routes to owning her own home. First, we had to find out what 
sort of property she liked, and what she could afford. The average 
house price in Glasgow is £136,000, which is far lower than the average 
for the whole UK.  It is still a huge sum for someone in Emma’s shoes, 
but happily there are big variations in price across various districts. We 
took her to meet a man who knows Glasgow well.

HOUSTON: 	Morning, Murray Houston, GSPC 

KOUBAYSSI:  	Hi there, Emma, pleased to meet you 

HOUSTON: 	Morning Emma. Do you want to come in and I’ll 
show you what properties we’ve got available? 

CURWEN:	We’d arrived at the Glasgow Solicitors’ Property Centre, 
which handles a large number of the area’s property sales, to consult its 
chief valuer, Murray Houston.  He and Emma huddled around the 
computer. 

HOUSTON: 	Emma what type of property are you looking for?

KOUBAYSSI: 	Ideally a two-bedroom flat and my preferred 
location is the south side of Glasgow.

HOUSTON: 	Okay, let’s have a search and see how many 
properties we can find that would suit. There are 69 properties currently 
available on the south side of Glasgow. 

CURWEN:		Murray Houston scrolled through a long list of 
properties. Along the way, he explained a bit about how the buying 
process in Scotland differs from the rest of the UK. And he singled out 
for Emma’s attention a uniquely Scottish kind of property, which is the 
size of a quarter of a house.

HOUSTON: 	This is a property we have for sale in Croftfoot, 
on the south side of Glasgow which is fairly popular. These were 
quarter villas which is flats but basically with your own front door and 
four of them in a building. It appears to be in good condition. There is a 
smallish kitchen but a dining room and a lounge and two double 
bedrooms which are both pretty big. Main bedroom’s 14 feet 11 by 10 
feet 9. 

CURWEN: 	What do you think? 

KOUBAYSSI: 	I know the properties. I like the property because 
they’re are a lot more roomier than a lot of new builds.

HOUSTON 	This house is offers over £69,995.

CURWEN: 	What does that mean, offers over?     

HOUSTON: 	Offers over is the normal pricing policy in 
Scotland.  It allows the level of demand to dictate how much more 
money than the asking price it achieves. For example, the south side of 
Glasgow, a nominal figure would be in the region of 15% over the price 
that you see.

CURWEN: 	So in theory that could be heading for what £85,000? 

HOUSTON: 	A good well presented quarter villa could be in 
the region of £80, it could be as high as £85,000 depending on its 
condition and popularity.

CURWEN: 	Is that the kind of price that you were thinking of?

KOUBAYSSI: 	I think that’s a reasonable price to pay but I 
would really need to take a closer look at it and see what it was like 
inside, because it is quite, not expensive, but I don’t know. I would 
need to look at my figures to know if I could afford it. 
 
CURWEN: 	Murray showed Emma a couple of one-bedroom flats 
too, but she was focussed on getting a bigger property, where she might 
be able to stay for longer and which might be more re-sellable.  

HOUSTON: 	Well let’s have a look at some other areas of 
Glasgow where perhaps you could find your ideal two-bedroom flat for 
the money. So this an example for you - Sandy Hills which is in the east 
end of Glasgow. It’s ex-local authority but again a two bedroom. You 
will notice these styles look very similar, a lot of them were built at the 
same time round Glasgow so they offer a similar accommodation, and 
this offers over £58,000 and again somewhere 10 to 15% over would be 
a fairly average guide of how much you would have to pay.

CURWEN: 	So that would take us to what? 

HOUSTON: 	Be in the region of the mid-60s to 70 as opposed 
to the 80s to 90s that you’ve looked at on the south side so far.

CURWEN: 	That’s much cheaper.

KOUBAYSSI: 	Yeah it’s much cheaper it’s just really difficult 
deciding whether you want to get a property and be really far away 
from all your friends in an area that you don’t know, and you probably 
wouldn’t feel that safe in because I don’t really know the area, and 
you’ve only got the kind of reputation precedes it. Or whether just to 
cut my losses and get a really small flat but somewhere a lot more 
central where at least it’s easy for me to get about the place. I’m just 
kind of in a predicament about what to do.

CURWEN: 	It was all about compromise, and about what Emma 
would actually be able to afford.  What did you think of all that?

KOUBAYSSI: 	Yeah, my head’s a little bit fuzzy now, there was 
a lot to take in but at least there are a lot of options, and  I think once I 
know what I can afford I need to just decide location or size, what’s 
more important to me.
 
CURWEN:		By now Emma knew the kind of place she really wanted 
would cost between £80,000 and £90,000. But her financial calculations 
weren’t just about the purchase price of the flat. They had to include all 
the expenses associated with moving, including money for lawyers’ 
fees. We went to see Glasgow solicitor Paul Carnan to find out what 
that might cost.

CARNAN: 	For first time buyers I would normally 
recommend you should set aside £500 plus VAT and outlays.  Now the 
VAT on £500 will be £87.50.  The outlays that you would incur would 
be registration fees, this is the amount that we pay to register a house, to 
register your title deeds and that’s based on the value of your property.  
If you’re buying a property at £100,000 your registration fees will be 
around £242.

KOUBAYSSI: 	On top of that do I have to pay for a survey or is 
that included in the original legal fees?

CARNAN: 	No, you’d have to pay a surveyor separately and 
that would depend on the level of survey that you get. There’s a basic 
valuation for mortgage purposes. That would come in at around £141. 
You can get a more detailed flat buyers’ report which is what I would 
recommend, and you could expect to pay £282 or so for a survey of that 
level.

CURWEN: 	Are you adding all this up Emma?

KOUBAYSSI: 	Yeah, I'm having a wee think it’s kind of adding 
up there. I’ve heard people mentioning taxes that I might have to pay, 
specifically stamp duty. 

CARNAN: 	Stamp duty land tax wouldn’t affect you because 
it only kicks in at £125,000.  So if you buy a property below £125,000 
you do not pay any stamp duty land tax.  

CURWEN: 	Well that was good news. But there was another issue to 
tackle, with legal implications which could add several hundred pounds 
to her bill

KOUBAYSSI: 	My stepfather’s in a position to invest some 
money into the property and I just wanted to ask what legal issues there 
were surrounding that? 

CARNAN: 	A lot depends on what your stepfather wants out 
of this. From your point of view you’ve got to consider what if he wants 
to sell, what if he dies, what if he gets into financial difficulties? All of 
these problems could arise and you have to think about it very carefully. 

KOUBAYSSI: 	Would you have that written down in a contract 
then?

CARNAN: 	You could have a partnership agreement if you 
wished and that would be up to you and your stepfather to decide what 
you wanted to put in that. It may be necessary if you’ve got separate 
interests for each of you to go and see separate lawyers to get that 
sorted out.

CURWEN: 	That sounds rather expensive.

CARNAN: 	That all adds to the cost. It would be a very very 
good idea for you and your stepfather to come to a decision as to 
whether or not you felt it had to be formalised by having a properly 
drawn up legal agreement.

CURWEN: 	Legal costs Emma, what did you think?

KOUBAYSSI: 	Yeah they seem like a lot, but it’s just once of 
those things that we’ll have to pay, and just work into how much money 
you need upfront before you buy the property. But it’s a lot of money.

CURWEN: 	What about the idea though that it might be even more 
expensive if you actually have to draw up contracts for co-ownership?

KOUBAYSSI: 	I think I have to carefully, carefully think about 
that, because if it is an option that we want to go down, you need to be 
very clear what both parties want to get out of it. 
 
CURWEN: 	The most important thing she still needed to know, was 
how much she could hope to borrow from a mortgage lender.  Emma’s 
ideal flat might cost between £80,000 and £90,000. Would anyone be 
prepared to lend her that much – and could she afford the monthly 
mortgage payments, given all the other outgoings she’d have? In the 
last few years, lenders have moved away from using multiples of 
people’s incomes as a guide to how much to lend, and towards 
weighing up just how much money borrowers can spare each month to 
make payments. That, in theory, might make it easier for Emma to 
borrow more. We arranged for her to meet mortgage broker Ray 
Boulger, from John Charcol. Listen carefully - there’s a whole lot of 
figures coming up.

KOUBAYSSI: 	My salary is £17,000 which roughly works out at 
about just over £1,100 take-home pay per month. I just want to find out 
what I can borrow? 

BOULGER: 	Before I can answer that, I need to know a bit 
more information, in particular, do you have any debts on which you 
make monthly payments?

KOUBAYSSI: 	Yes I’ve got a personal loan which I pay £126 
per month to and I’ve also got a visa card which has got £2,000 on it 
and I pay roughly £100 per month to that.

BOULGER: 	Okay, well the way that most lenders will look at 
that is they will say that you can afford a certain amount a month in 
finance commitments which includes what you’re paying on your loan 
and your credit card. So if those debts remain, the amount you can 
borrow will be significantly less than if you were to pay them off.

KOUBAYSSI: 	My stepfather’s in a position to loan me £20,000.  
What would be the best way that I could utilise this money, would it be 
to put it down as a full deposit or to pay some of my debts off and then 
I could take on a larger mortgage?

BOULGER: 	The other factor that will influence this is the 
length of the mortgage.  At your age a 30 year mortgage would be 
perfectly reasonable. So if you were to pay off both the loan and the 
credit card, you could then actually borrow up to £88,000 on a 30 year 
term. By using £8,000 of your stepfather’s £20,000, you’d only have a 
£12,000 deposit to put down, but that does mean you could then buy a 
£100,000 property. Now if we work on an interest rate of 5% - which is 
actually more than you’d probably have to pay so I’m building in a bit 
of a margin here in case by the time you find a property rates have gone 
up a bit - on a repayment basis over 30 years, it would cost you around 
£480 per month. But because you’d not be paying the monthly interest 
on either your loan or your credit card, actually from a cost point of 
view, that’s perhaps more comfortable than keeping your loan and your 
credit card and having a smaller mortgage. 

CURWEN: 	Looking at her sums, even if her debts were paid off, 
Emma didn’t think her budget could stretch to £480 a month. She was 
reluctant to commit to payments she might not be able to make, given 
what she’d have to pay on top for her council tax, utility bills and 
insurance. Well, Ray had another quote for her. Same size of loan, 
different set-up.  

BOULGER: 	On an interest-only basis it will cost you £367 a 
month.

CURWEN:	That sounded more manageable. But alarm bells were 
ringing. 

KOUBAYSSI: 	I think that’s the option that I could afford but I 
don’t really like the sound of an interest-only mortgage.

BOULGER: 	The key disadvantage is of course that you’re not 
actually making any inroads at all to paying back that mortgage.  The 
danger is that you actually get comfortable with the extra income 
you’ve got cos you’re not paying the mortgage back, and you never 
address actually doing anything else.      
 
CURWEN:	Ray Boulger had identified a crucial disadvantage with 
mortgages where only the interest on the loan is paid, and the original 
debt remains untouched. Interest-only mortgages like this have sparked 
increasing concern. The regulator, the Financial Services Authority, has 
warned about the risks of taking on such a mortgage without any 
prospect or intention of ever paying off the capital. The Britannia 
Building Society has called that a “potential time-bomb”. It’s especially 
worrying if you think house prices may stop rising, or even fall. Emma 
was wary, but Ray pointed out it would be possible to reduce the risk in 
future, when she had a bit more spare money. 

BOULGER: 	The way to look at this is to regard this as a 
stepping stone. It helps you to buy that first property. What you should 
do is start to make some extra payments as soon as you can afford to.  
Most lenders will allow you to make some overpayments on the 
mortgage without incurring any early repayment charge, typically up to 
10% of the mortgage amount per annum. So you could simply start to 
make overpayments as and when you can afford it, either on a regular 
basis or in lump sums perhaps if you get a good bonus. The other 
option is that you could switch your mortgage to a repayment basis.  All 
lenders will allow you to do that.  That makes the mortgage much more 
structured. It commits you to that higher monthly payment so you don’t 
need the discipline of deciding what to pay extra.  

CURWEN:		According to Ray, Emma must be disciplined enough to 
start repaying some of the capital when she could afford to. He warned 
her about other costs – most mortgages come with an arrangement fee, 
and if she wanted to take out insurance against not being able to pay her 
mortgage bill, that would cost extra too. It certainly looked as though 
the key to maximising her borrowing power was paying off her debts. 
That could be done using her stepfather’s cash. But Emma wondered 
how his investment might affect her mortgage.
 
KOUBAYSSI: 	If I was to use my stepfather’s money as a 
deposit, would I have to tell the mortgage lender? 

BOULGER: 	From a lender’s perspective, the important thing 
is whether the deposit is going to require you to make any monthly 
repayments which in your case it’s not.  He could if he wanted to 
actually own the property jointly with you. If he does choose to actually 
be on the deeds to the property, he will then have to be on the mortgage 
as well. That does have some tax complications and I would advise 
Avoiding that unless he really feels it’s important to him.  

CURWEN: 	And that means that he’s just as liable as Emma is for 
paying the mortgage? 

BOULGER: 	If there are two parties to a mortgage, even if one 
of them is actually paying the mortgage, from a legal perspective both 
are what is called jointly and severally liable for the mortgage which 
means that if one person doesn’t pay, the other is responsible 100%. 

CURWEN: 	Ray Boulger had answered a lot of Emma’s most 
pressing questions.  And for the first time, she now had a clear picture 
of the most she might expect to borrow – £88,000, as an interest-only 
loan. If you add in her stepfather’s money, it could allow her to buy a 
property worth £100,000. It was more than she’d imagined, and perhaps 
more than she needed.

KOUBAYSSI: 	I could probably get a decent property for 
£88,000 and have some of that money to put down as a deposit as well 
as pay all the fees. I don’t need to be greedy and say I want a flat for 
£100,000. But between £80 and £90,000 I could get a really decent two-
bedroom flat in an all right bit on the south side of Glasgow, which is 
very exciting.

CURWEN: 	It was sounding good. But we wanted to show Emma 
another option,  which might allow her to spend a bit less and still get a 
home of her own. It was a new scheme called Homestake funded by the 
Scottish Executive, which allows people on low incomes to buy a part-
share in a brand-new flat. The Milnbank Housing Association was 
offering eight of these properties in Dennistoun in the East End of 
Glasgow. 
 
SOUND OF KEYS 

CURWEN: 	Emma was shown a 2-bed flat by Joanne Leggatt, from 
the Housing Association.

SOUND OF DOOR CLOSING

LEGGATT: 	So this is us in one of the Homestake flats. Do 
you want to go into the bedrooms?

KOUBAYSSI: 	Yes, great

LEGGATT: 	Now all the bedrooms in these flats, the main 
bedrooms come ensuite.

KOUBAYSSI: 	Oh right, okay.

CURWEN: 	The Homestake scheme allows people to buy as little as 
60 per cent of a flat.

KOUBAYSSI: 	What are these properties on the market at?

LEGGATT: 	Well the purchase price of this property is 
£134,995, okay, that’s the full purchase price. Starting off at a 60% 
share with the Homestake it would be £80,997.

CURWEN: 	What do you think about the price?

KOUBAYSSI: 	I think the full price is quite expensive and I 
wouldn’t be able to afford that but, £80,000 did you say? 

LEGGATT: 	£81,000

KOUBAYSSI: 	£81,000. That’s probably within my budget. New 
builds I think are quite expensive.

CURWEN:	This brand-new flat would cost her a bit less, on a part-
share basis, than Emma had been budgeting for. Homestake is available 
across Scotland; in Glasgow it’s the city council which has 
responsibility for the scheme. So we met Isabelle Cameron from its 
Development Regeneration Services department.

CAMERON:	The Homestake Scheme is designed specifically 
to help people who want to enter owner occupation. It’s a scheme that 
allows them to buy a percentage share in a property and the other 
percentage share is owned by a housing association.

KOUBAYSSI: 	Would it make a difference if I was like a teacher 
or a nurse, if I was applying for this?

CAMERON: 	There’s no specific employment category 
targeted here. Anyone can apply for Homestake. However, if a housing 
association has existing tenants who may be eligible for Homestake, 
then they can prioritise that group of people. The reason behind that is it 
can free up a house for someone to be allocated from the waiting list.

KOUBAYSSI: 	How does it work financially in practice then? 

CAMERON: 	People must buy a minimum of 60% of the 
property and up to a maximum first time round of 80%. It is possible in 
most areas to buy the whole property outright eventually.  So people 
need to initially be able to secure a mortgage up to the value of 60% of 
the property. 

KOUBAYSSI: 	Would I own 60% of the property or would I 
own the whole amount of the property?

CAMERON: 	You will be the owner of the property but you 
will have a 60% stake in it. The remaining 40% stake would be owned 
by a housing association. 

KOUBAYSSI: 	Do I have to pay rent on the other 40% of the 
property then?

CAMERON:	No, there’s no rent payable under the Homestake 
Scheme.

KOUBAYSSI: 	How many Homestake properties are available at 
the moment? 

CAMERON:	At the end of March, Glasgow purchased 26 
properties for Homestake purposes. At the present time I believe there’s 
about 7 or 8 of those still left for sale, the rest have been sold. In 
addition to that, we issued approvals for a further 100 Homestake units 
over the next 2 years so there’s quite a number coming on stream.

KOUBAYSSI: 	The property I looked at today and I’m aware 
some of the other properties are also in the market at a similar price of 
about £130,000 - that seems a wee bit expensive.

CAMERON:	Well obviously it would depend on how much 
mortgage you can raise whether you would be able to sustain a 
purchase of a property of that value. However, we do intend to try and 
have a range of property prices ultimately through the Homestake 
Scheme in Glasgow. 
 
CURWEN: 	Homestake is a purely Scottish initiative, but there are 
other affordable housing schemes available in the UK and more are to 
be launched later this year. If you’re interested, try contacting your 
council, or local housing association. There’s more information on our 
website www.bbc.co.uk/insidemoney. Emma could see the advantages 
of the Homestake scheme, but she was not convinced it was the right 
route for her, partly because she’d set her heart on an older property 
rather than a new flat.

KOUBAYSSI: 	For my situation, I don’t really think it would 
benefit me. Perhaps if you were an existing housing association tenant 
you would have priority. Also I think there’s probably quite a lot of 
hoops I’d have to jump through to get there, and I also wouldn’t really 
want to be tied to the style of the accommodation and all those kind of 
restrictions isn’t appealing to me. I want more control.

CURWEN: 	There was one final option we had up our sleeves to 
show Emma. She could take the money she could raise and join forces 
with a fellow-buyer, to purchase an even better property. Lenders are 
used to putting more than one name on the mortgage, and usually it 
doesn’t matter what the relationship is between the buyers. It’s even 
possible to link up with a stranger, perhaps through one of a number of 
property matchmaking websites which have sprung up in the last year. 
Emma and I logged on to one of them, www.sharedspaces.co.uk. So 
we’ll go to location, Glasgow, click on Search. Let’s see what we come 
up with. 

KOUBAYSSI: 	So four people have come up here, we’ve got 2 
women and 2 men. Got a woman in her 50s, male 42 and another male 
41, and another girl, 22. 

CURWEN:	 	This particular website is the brainchild of Richard 
Cohn. He went into a studio in London, and told Emma why he set it up.

COHN: 		I flat shared for years, because I simply couldn't 
afford to buy.  And it was whilst I was flat sharing that I was thinking if 
you can rent together, given the right legal framework, why couldn't 
you buy together? So very simply it was designed around a dating 
website.  So you would register your interest in co-buying.  You'd 
create a profile and then you’d go out and search for somebody else so 
you could potentially buy together. 

KOUBAYSSI: 	And how many people have registered so far? 

COHN: 		We’ve got about two and a half thousand people 
registered so far. It’s growing every day, and seeing as we’ve only been 
around for about four and a half, five months now, it’s not bad going. 
There’s been a lot of interest. 

KOUBAYSSI: 	When I had a look at the website, I didn’t see that 
many people registered in Scotland, and even less registered in 
Glasgow?

COHN: 		Right, Scotland was a little late on our agenda, 
unfortunately. We’ve only actually launched the Scottish cities about a 
month ago. So, we’ve only got around about 20 people so far, but in the 
next month or so, that’s on the agenda for us as well. 

KOUBAYSSI: 	This is a really big thing to undertake: buying 
with a stranger. What are the risks attached to that?

COHN: 		I would always say that if you are actually 
thinking about buying with a stranger, please don’t. We suggest all over 
the website, be careful, take your time, even rent with them for a short 
while to get to know them, because by the time you look to buy with 
them, they should either be a friend or a business partner. As far as the 
risks that you could potentially come across, there are 2 main areas that 
you need to consider. The first is a legal document which sets out your 
rights and responsibilities as a co-owner, how the finances are going to 
be arranged, and ultimately, how the relationship is going to end, 
because the ultimate end of a co-buyer relationship is when you’ve 
actually saved upenough money to be able to go off and buy your own 
property. The second thing is to protect yourself and your co-buyers, 
it’s very, very important that you actually get some form of mortgage 
payment protection insurance.

CURWEN: 	And that's something that people need to take separate 
advice about: buying insurance.

COHN: 		Absolutely, absolutely.

KOUBAYSSI: 	Do you know of anybody that’s bought yet using 
the website?

COHN: 		Using my website, no. Because it’s a fairly new 
idea, it’s taken a while for people to actually get used to the whole 
concept. What we do know is that only in the last month or so, we’ve 
actually got people who are starting to meet up, face to face and discuss 
the possibility of buying together.  
 
CURWEN:		Was Emma interested?

KOUBAYSSI: 	It would depend on my situation, whether it was 
me on my own, with no other source of income, I think if there was 
more options, say there were 30 people in Glasgow in a similar 
situation to me, I would definitely pursue it. I found 
my flatmates through a similar website. 

CURWEN: 	But it’s very different taking on a mortgage with a 
stranger. If they can’t pay, you have to pay. 

KOUBAYSSI: 	Yes well. Whether you could do that with 
someone that you didn’t have a history with them - that’s where an 
immense amount of trust would have to go into it.

CURWEN:		By joining Inside Money, Emma Koubayssi had had a 
crash course in how to get on the housing ladder. And like many first-
time buyers right across the UK, it looked as if she’d only get what she 
wanted, by taking on a home-loan which was several times her income, 
and, initially at least, paying just the interest on the debt. With the 
advice she’d had from mortgage broker Ray Boulger, the prospect of 
buying had become much more real. But were Emma’s eyes open to the 
risks?


KOUBAYSSI: 	It seems if I do use the money that I could 
possibly use from my stepfather, I could pay my debt off and borrow 
enough money to buy a two bedroom flat, and pay all of the mortgage 
and monthly outgoings and have a property that I would like within a 
location that I like. 

CURWEN: 	Was that what you expected?

KOUBAYSSI:  	No, no. I mean it’s not as straightforward as me 
being able to just rock up and get a mortgage for that amount of money. 
I would have to deal with my debts, but hopefully once I have a 
discussion with my stepfather, I hope to go down that route. 

CURWEN: 	What you’re looking at doing is a huge responsibility 
because you might be taking on a property that’s worth what, 5 times 
your annual income?

KOUBAYSSI: 	It is a lot but I feel ready. I’m at the stage of my 
life now where I feel ready to make that commitment and take on that 
responsibility. 

CURWEN: 	To borrow the kind of money that you want, you’re 
really talking about an interest-only mortgage.  That’s risky.

KOUBAYSSI: 	Yeah, when I went through the figures with Ray, 
the interest-only mortgage is the only one that’s really going to give me 
the buying power to get the kind of property I want. Before I did this 
programme I was like, no way interest-only mortgages. But after 
speaking to Ray, I kind of changed my views quite drastically on that, 
and I found out if I was disciplined enough, I could pay some extra 
money per month on to my mortgage which I didn’t even know was a 
possibility with interest-only mortgages - and that’s really appealing to 
me.

CURWEN: 	Are you disciplined enough to do that?

KOUBAYSSI: 	At the end of the day, if I’m old enough to get a 
mortgage on my own, I’m old enough to discipline myself to pay off 
some of my capital, so I’m sure I’ll be able to do it. I’m just really 
really excited about the possibility of getting on the property ladder.