This morning, Barclays Mortgages has announced a new set of age-related criteria for its residential mortgage offerings, hoping to simplifying the mortgage application process for older borrowers. The changes, establish new guidelines for maximum age limits,...
Today, The Mortgage Works (TMW) Nationwide Building Society’s buy-to-let lending only arm released their energy efficiency report for the private buy-to-let rental sector. The latest report from The Mortgage Works explores the energy efficiency of the UK's private...
A couple of weeks ago, our team at Oportfolio Mortgages had the pleasure of welcoming Abi Muazu, business development manager for Barclays mortgages into our Putney mortgage brokerage. As part of our ongoing commitment to building close relationships with mortgage...
This morning TSB have announced a slew of changes to the products they offer to borrowers, including a new five year fixed rate mortgage at below 4%! Something that most lenders haven't offered since before the announcement of the disastrous mini-budget in September...
2023 has turned out to be very tough year for the average UK resident. With spiralling interest rates and the general cost of living going to unprecedented levels, people are struggling to keep up with their bills and many are defaulting on mortgages, credit cards,...
Following on from our blog post yesterday about Coventry Building Society lowering 90% and 95% mortgage products for first time buyers, Nationwide building society have also announced that they will be reducing rates on their own 90% and 95% mortgage products. These...
Historically it has always been tough to buy your first property as an average first time buyer. Earning enough as a young professional to borrow a large enough mortgage, saving a large enough deposit whilst also paying rent every month, and generally getting your...
There seems to be a lot of conflicting information on the internet at the moment, surrounding the property market and mortgages. Are rates coming up or going down? Are property prices falling or rising still? Is the property market stagnating or thriving? The simple...
What Is An Early Repayment Charge? Most people reading this blog will have heard of an early repayment charge or an ERC. Chances are that you have been confronted with the prospect of having to pay an ERC or have seen it written in the small print on your mortgage...
Mortgage lender Scottish Widows have just announced that they will be introducing some changes to their mortgage income cap for affordability calculations on straight mortgages and remortgages. What does this mean exactly? It means that Scottish Widows will be...
Despite the Bank of England raising the country's base rate to 4.25% at the end of March 2023, it seems that this hasn't really deterred UK mortgage lenders from continuing with rate reductions. Mortgage rates sky-rocketed at the end of 2022 as the Bank of England...
We are only three days into April 2023 and we are already seeing lots of lenders changing and improving their mortgage product offering. We are however also seeing a few lenders who have increased some of their rates. Why are they doing this? As we have already...
In another positive step forward for the UK mortgage market, mortgage titan HSBC have announced that as of Monday the 3rd of April they will be reducing rates on all of their initial rate products. This great move forward for the lender comes after a period of...
From data produced by the Bank of England, we can confirm that UK mortgage approvals are on the upward trend after months and months of struggle. In recent months even mortgage affordability, let alone proceeding cases, has been on a decline as the cost of living...
New research carried out has revealed that the overall cost of being a landlord and maintaining a buy-to-let mortgage has increased by 76% in the last 12-months alone, as mortgage interest rates have soared and the cost of living has gripped property investors. There...
If you have any questions about UK mortgage news or anything you’ve read then please get in touch. We’d love to hear from you.
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