Year: 2019

There have been a number of remortgage applications recently for those looking to raise funds to purchase other properties or to make improvements to their current homes.  Just around the local area, I have seen an amazing amount of building work and renovations / extensions being carried out.  Many home owners appear to be improving […]

There’s been a lot of hype around the rise of ‘Cryptocurrency’.  Specifically, relating to Bitcoin and other similar electronic currencies.  Currently they are not regulated and their price can fluctuate immensely day by day.  However, there have been a number of success stories and thus providing funds which could possibly be used as a deposit […]

Let’s not beat around the bush, it’s tough out there!  We have seen numerous local and national retail outlets and banks recently confirm they are to reduce their store or branch numbers as the ‘online versus shop front’ takes further casualties. In addition, the finance sector is also finding it tough.  Despite already losing some […]

With the first quarter of 2019 now over, we can safely say that the word to sum up these three months is uncertainty. Already we’ve seen three lenders stop lending or pull all of their products due to ‘costs of funding’ and ‘uncertain times ahead’.  This is all a bit ‘de ja vu’ compared to back […]

Last weekend, we exhibited at the Property Investor and Homebuyers show at the London ExCel.  It was a great opportunity to talk to professional landlords, as well as those looking to take their first steps onto the Buy to Let sector ladder. With many changes and increases in taxation on profits being recently introduced along […]

A large myth suggests that because you are self employed, you will find it harder to get a mortgage. Maybe that was so a few years ago, but not today. Yes, the financial crash took its toll on the self employed and quite rightly killed off the ‘self certification’ type deals (no proof of income).  […]

One of the most frequent questions to start a mortgage interview tends to be around ‘How much can I borrow?’.   Only a few years ago, that could easily have been up to 8 x income with the minimal of fuss.  Oh, how things have changed, and rightly so!  Those were times with little control and […]

Some lenders are distributing letters to those coming to the end of their product term offering them new rates, but indicating a deadline in which to switch.  We had one customer recently who was four months out from their current rate changing from a fixed rate to the lenders Standard Variable Rate.  They were offered some great […]

I mentioned last week that the mortgage market is buoyant.  And it is.  However, there have been some ‘ripples’ in this with three well known lenders (in the specialist sector) closing their doors, or revisiting their funding options in the first quarter of the year. Sadly, last week there was another casualty of the uncertainty of […]

The good news is that the mortgage market is really buoyant with good business volumes and mortgage product choice at its highest for some years.  There are some fantastic rates and opportunities for clients, especially pre Brexit. The bad news is that this is causing a number of lenders major servicing problems as they do not […]