Getting a remortgage for a Zero Hours client – Wythenshawe, Manchester

The client and the property

A client in Wythenshawe, Manchester, approached our brokers for help with a remortgage after a change in circumstances affected what their existing lender could offer.

• Age: 51
• Employment: Supply teacher with a zero-hours contract for a number of years
• Family situation: Separated, with grown-up children
• Property ownership: The home was held in joint names with her estranged husband
• Property location: Swinton, Manchester
• Estimated property value: £400,000
• Existing mortgage: Repayment mortgage with Halifax
• Mortgage balance: £21,000
• Remaining term: 3 years

Because the mortgage had not been on a fixed rate, the client had been paying the lender’s standard variable rate, with payments around £615 per month.

The goal

The client needed to raise £54,000 to buy out her estranged husband’s interest and remove his name from the deeds.

This was not simply a rate switch. The remortgage also needed to provide the additional capital required to complete the ownership change.

The problem: lender restrictions around zero-hours income

A key challenge was that some lenders do not lend to borrowers on zero-hours contracts, or they only consider applications where the zero-hours arrangement has been in place for a defined period.

In this case, the client’s employment history was complicated by a break in the pattern:

• She had been on a zero-hours arrangement with her original school for a long period.
• In April 2021, she took a five-month temporary contract with another school, with an expectation of a full-time role.
• The full-time position did not materialise.
• She returned to her original school in September 2021.

As a result, she had not worked on a zero-hours contract for the full 12-month period that some lenders require. This meant the existing lender could not proceed in the way initially expected.

The solution: remortgaging to a lender with a better fit

Rather than trying to force the application through the same route, the remortgage strategy focused on finding a lender whose criteria better matched the client’s overall situation.

The recommendation was to remortgage to a new lender (a smaller building society) after reviewing the options available for borrowers with complex employment patterns.

The remortgage plan included:

• Repaying the existing Halifax mortgage
• Raising additional capital to fund the buy-out of her estranged husband’s interest
• Structuring the new mortgage to align with the client’s monthly budget

Mortgage outcome

The client remortgaged to a new mortgage of £75,000, which covered both:

• repayment of the existing balance, and
• the additional funds required for the ownership transfer.

A 2-year discount rate was arranged at 1.79% over a 15-year term. This reduced the client’s monthly payments to approximately £475.

The result

With the remortgage completed, the client was able to secure the outcome she needed:

• sole ownership of the property, and
• the estrangement buy-out completed through the funds released by the remortgage.

What this case highlights

This case highlights that remortgaging for borrowers on zero-hours contracts often comes down to lender-specific criteria and how employment history is assessed.

When the “standard” route is blocked—such as where the required zero-hours period is not met—an independent broker approach can help by:

• mapping the application to lenders with suitable underwriting requirements, and
• structuring the mortgage to meet both capital raising needs and ongoing affordability.