This isn’t one of my own but a useful tidbit nonetheless. I have some thoughts and ideas floating around for some original articles but January has started with a boom and free time is hard to find! So here’s something someone else wrote! Newcastle Building Society has launched two competitive mortgage schemes to help first [...]

A new product that has appeared on the mortgage scene is being called a 100% LTV Family Guarantee Mortgage. This has been designed for families who wish to help their children get on the property ladder. As the name suggests, a family member must provide a guarantee and that guarantee must come in the form of [...]

Equity release; a term met with instant distaste and fear, however this out-dated approach could may well be having an impact on how people view their financial options during their retirement years with many having little knowledge and understanding of how it truly works and what rules have now been put in place to regulate [...]

I found it quite bizarre when in my inbox dropped an email with a limited 7 day offer on some mortgage rates from Abbey. It’s the kind of marketing I’d expect from a closing down furniture shop! A 7 day only offer on a mortgage product?! Is this the shape of things to come? Now [...]

My mortgage has been on my lender’s Standard Variable Rate (SVR) for over a year now and once again the Bank of England has announced that the Base Rate is to remain at 0.5% for the 23rd month running. So here I sit, safe in the knowledge that for another month my mortgage repayment will [...]

I haven’t been paying too much attention to the mortgage market lately because frankly it’s a little slow and somewhat tainted by stigma (having joined the industry in late 2007) but it’s been almost impossible to miss the presence of Santander. Until recently they had been dominating the results tables of mortgage research with leading [...]

House prices are up! House prices are down… Now they’re up again! And now there down again. And when they are only halfway up they’ll be neither up nor down…. And that’s where they need to be, neither up nor down but on a bit of a plateau. While that’s going on, earnings need to [...]

If you are: 1/ An experienced landlord 2/ Can afford a 30% deposit 3/ Want to buy a Buy-to-Let property that needs some work Then it may be possible to get over half the deposit back once a bit of redecorating work has been done as well as recoup some of the cost of the redecorating. There is [...]

There has been some news about this in the past but I have now experienced the affects of Japanese Knotweed on a mortgage application first hand so I can now add to the melting pot. My client had found a house they wanted, we put their application in, the mortgage lender contracted a surveyor to [...]

Now a millionaire doesn’t necessarily have to have £1 million in the bank. It’s possible to be considered a millionaire if you own assets like a house/yacht/racehorse that are worth a million or so. Owning a house worth £1 million or more with a mortgage of £750,000 doesn’t technically make you a millionaire until the [...]