Help-to-Buy: A helping hand or hindrance?
As the five-year anniversary of the help-to-buy scheme rolls around, I want to explore the repercussions of these deals, and if they are still a good option for first-time buyers with low deposits. One glaring repercussion is that homeowners who enrolled on a help-to-buy scheme five years ago are now faced with the prospect […]
A Fresh Approach to HMOs
When you think about houses of multiple occupation (or HMOs) you might think about student digs, something from the ‘Young Ones’ perhaps, where squalor is right of passage. It’s to be expected that almost everyone has a story about the shocking state of their student housing back in the day. In reality, houses of multiple occupation are […]
Concessionary Purchase Update
One of our most popular blog posts in the past has been in relation to concessionary purchase. This is where a relative can gift equity in a similar way to cash. By offering the property with a discount against the market value, the buying relative in this situation can often get a mortgage for 100% […]
De-mystifying Loan To Value
LTV is one of those acronyms that is thrown about so frequently by mortgage brokers that it can be very hard to remember that not everyone knows what it means. It is probably the most important factor in mortgage lending, so I wanted to explore what LTV means and why it’s so important. LTV means […]
The New Help-To-Buy ISA: Not as exciting as you first thought
It’s known that the juiciest items are always held back until the end of a government announced budget. It’s usually related to the fun things, the life changing things, the things that will make you forget about the drudgery of the previous figures. The latest budget was no different. One of the ‘prizes’ was the […]
Things to Consider Before Seeing a Broker
So you’ve been saving obsessively for the past year and a half, or perhaps have just had a windfall, and now is the time to finally buy your first home. You know which area you want to live in, you know what you want from your new home and you know how much you have […]
A Day in the Life of a Mortgage Broker
Before the credit crunch, there was a relatively even split between the numbers of customers that sourced a mortgage via a broker and those that went directly to a bank. Now I think that a majority would consult with a broker first, certainly when buying a new home or where extra borrowing is required. Before […]
Mortgage Down Valuations
A mortgage down valuation can be a frustrating element of any mortgage purchase or remortgage. Ultimately, the value of a property is the amount someone is prepared to pay for it. However, lenders need to set their own independent value on an asset they plan to lend against and, even if you have successfully negotiated […]
The Trouble With London Rent to Mortgage Calculations
Anyone who has ever looked to invest in property in the capital has run into the problem of London rent to mortgage calculations. The soaring price of property has far exceeded the rise in rental rates and this has left many Buy to Let (BTL) investors having to find ever-increasing deposits in order to secure […]
The Problem with Buy-to-Let in London
Check out this fantastic infographic looking at the issues facing someone looking to invest in BTL in London and some of the solutions available.
