Mortgage News, Insights & Advice
All the latest UK mortgage news, insights and advice from the world of mortgage lending and Oportfolio

What to Expect From 2025 Mortgage Interest Rates
Recently, Jade Pinkerton, senior mortgage and protection advisor at Oportfolio Mortgages attended the Coutts and Savills Market Update webinar. As expected, interest 2024 and 2025 mortgage interest rates and differing predictions were discussed in great detail....

NatWest Mortgages Increase Rates
NatWest mortgages are set to take a bashing this week as the lender announces that their mortgage product rates are due to increase by as much as 0.30%. This is a sharp jolt to mortgage borrowers and frankly to mortgage intermediaries who have all been rejoicing over...

Halifax To Release Mortgages Without Early Repayment Charges
Halifax bank, one of the UK's biggest and most well known mortgage lenders will be releasing some new mortgage products over the next few days, most significantly perhaps, they will be releasing mortgages without early repayment charges. Not only does this mean that...
Is a 2 Year or 5 Year Fixed Mortgage Better?
Historically, choosing a 5 year or 2 year fixed mortgage was quite a straightforward decision to make for mortgage borrowers. Essentially, do you want to keep the mortgage with a competitive rate for a couple of years and then potentially move on to something...
Nationwide Cuts 90% and 95% Mortgage Products
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...
How To Avoid Early Repayment Charges On Mortgages
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 Product Watch – April Week 1
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...
New TSB Five Year Fixed Rate Mortgage at 3.89%
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...
Up To 95% Mortgages For First Time Buyers
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...
Scottish Widows Increase Mortgage Income Cap
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...
HSBC Reduces Every Single Initial Mortgage Rate
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...
How To Avoid Defaulting On Mortgages
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,...
Agreed Property Sales Return To Pre-Pandemic Levels
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...
More Rate Reductions Despite Base Rate Hike
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...
UK Mortgage Approvals Are On The Rise
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...
We're Here to Help
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.