Christmas has come early for home buyers as Father Christmas, otherwise known as George Osbourne, has lavished gifts onto the housing market. He has reformed stamp duty and in the process cut taxes by 800 million pounds per year in…
Second Charge Borrowings
There are lots of ways we can source borrowing money, but most of us turn to the same option time and time again. Whether it is a credit card, a personal loan, the ‘bank of mum and dad’ or your…
Is 10 years too long to tie yourself into a mortga
Is 10 years too long to tie yourself into a mortgage deal? If the answer is no then it may be worth considering one deal from the Nationwide Society that some pundits have described as extraordinary. They have just launched…
Cryptic Credit Scoring
We all know how important a good credit score is when you come to apply for a mortgage, but it is more difficult to understand exactly what actually helps to make your credit score good. Obviously making sure you don’t…
Mortgages in Retirement
More people are retiring with outstanding mortgages with over 350,000 over 65’s still having a mortgage. The Financial Conduct Authority has indicated that on average 40,000 retired people a year over the next decade will see their deals end, so…
Don’t let the tail wag the dog
Nobody likes paying taxes. In fact most people hate paying taxes, sometimes so much so that they will do anything they can to make sure they pay as little as possible. This can be a sensible thing to do…
The Mortgage Lending Cap and How it affects you
The amount of money lent in June reached £17.5 billion for residential mortgages. This figure is 17% more than for the same period last year and is the highest monthly figure since October last year. These figures were lent before…
Thinking ahead before you apply for a mortgage
There is a small minority of people who are so spontaneous that they wake up one day and think ‘I’m going to buy a house’, and then they go out and do it without any fear or concerns. For most…
Buy to Let for the Long Haul
Buy to let lenders typically want their borrowers to pay off their mortgages by the time they have reached seventy years of age. These rules have not helped people who are coming up to retirement with perhaps some cash available,…
Time to Fix
This week we have had a rash of data starting with inflation rising in April for the first time in ten months, with once again inflation rising faster than wages. In addition London house prices are now 25% percent above…