Accountant adds up the cost of moving on

JEREMY YEOMANS, 28, and his wife Beth, 22, say they received a cool response from Halifax Building Society when they sought help recently. They bought a one-bedroom home in Guildford, Surrey, in August 1990 for pounds 68,000. Now they want to move to nearby Farnham.

Mr Yeomans is an accountant and Mrs Yeomans a trainee traffic engineer with a local authority. Their mortgage outstrips the value of their house by about pounds 8,000.

'The Halifax has made it clear that we will have to save up a 5 per cent deposit on a new property, the fees involved with buying and selling and all of the negative equity amount until we can be considered for a mortgage,' Mr Yeomans says.

'If we were to buy a property costing pounds 80,000 we would have to save pounds 16,000 or more. We have managed to save pounds 9,000 and our present salaries are such that we could afford to save pounds 500 to pounds 600 a month, but we would need at least another year to meet these objectives.'

A Halifax spokesman looked into the Yeomans' case and said he thought they would qualify to be considered for the society's negative equity scheme when it is launched.