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Shared ownership is an increasing opportunity for clients to get their first steps on the housing ladder.

Shared ownership mortgages and remortgages are now being offered from £5,000 to £200,000, with 100%LTVs up to of the borrower’s share. Cheshire Mortgage Corperation can help borrowers with perfect credit ratings and those who have experienced credit difficulties. They can also consider many income sources and many property types, including high-rise apartments.

Kensington will now consider applicants who have had up to two CCJs or defaults totalling up to  a maximum of £750 as long as they have been satisfied for more than six months.
Customers are also allowed two unsecured defaults in the past two years, as long as there have been none in the past six months.

The lender says the mortgages have been introduced to meet the growing demand of a  number of credit-worthy borrowers who have experienced a financial blip during the recession, found their feet again, but are prevented from getting a mortgage because their circumstances do not meet the rigid criteria required by the automated credit scoring of many lenders.
“The prime fixed rate products are on offer from 5.99% at up to 70% LTV.
Kensington has extended its distribution to all members of the L&G Mortgage Club in addition to its existing distributors, which include appointed representatives of Openwork, Pink Home Loans, Personal Touch Financial Services, Mortgage Intelligence and Mortgage Next.

According to the mortgage market news today, The UK’s major banks will fight against new Financial Services Authority (FSA)regulations that aim to ban self-certification mortgages . Dubbed as liar’s mortgages, a ban on these mortgage products could make it very difficult for self-employed individuals to get a mortgage.
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Alister Darling announced that Lloyds Banking Group and Royal Bank of Scotland have legally agreed lending commitments for the next year ahead from March 2010.
Lloyds have agreed to a lending commitment of £47bn, £3bn in additional mortgage lending and £44bn in total gross lending to businesses.
RBS have agreed a lending commitment of £58bn; £8bn in additional mortgage lending and £50bn in total gross lending to businesses.

The government will report to parliament on the delivery of the year two commitments at the end of the period.
If the government’s judgement is that either bank has failed to meet its lending commitments for year two, or has seriously breached the behaviours set out under their SME Customer Charters, the Government will inform UK Financial Investments Ltd, which will work with the remuneration committees of the relevant banks to determine the appropriate consequences of the breach of the year two commitments or the Customer Charters for the relevant executives.

In an attempt to stimulate the UK housing market Alister Darling has abolished Stamp Duty for First Timer Buyers on property costing up to £250,000 from midnight tonight and will also apply through 2011. 

In his pre-Budget report in December, Darling said the Stamp Duty holiday would not be extended beyond the end of 2009. The holiday had increased the threshold at which buyers paid Stamp Duty from £125,000 to £175,000 between September 2008 and December 2009.
The Council of Mortgage Lenders has estimated that if the £250,000 threshold had existed in 2009, 92% of first-time buyers and 69% of movers would have been exempt.
The trade body also predicted that approximately 350,000 households (including cash buyers, not just those with mortgages) could benefit over the rest of this calendar year, at a cost to the Government of around £630m.
The cut for first-time buyers will be paid for by a hike in Stamp Duty to 5% for properties worth more than one million pounds.

Karen Barrett, chief executive of Unbisased.co.uk, said homeowners  should seriously think about changing lenders to protect against monthly increases in their mortgage  from existing lenders.
She added: “With the base rate now remaining at a record low of 0.5 % for a full year, an increasing number of homeowners believe that staying on their lender’s standard variable rate (SVR) is the best option for them.”
Almost a 33% of homeowners said they would not consider switching mortgages for a better deal and the number of people on an SVR increased from 23 % in January 2009 to 31 % at the end of 2009.
The recent rise in the number of deals saw gross mortgage lending increase by 6% to £9.2 billion in January, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders.

Bradford & Bingley announced last week that they lost £196 million due to  buy to let fraud and bad debt. It appears that mortgage fraud has been on the up over the last couple of years but truth is that mortgage fraud has been increasing for many years now due to intense competition in the sector and a very strong UK property market. These two elements have in many ways masked any potential for problems because ultimately no matter what has been declared on the application form, payments have been made in time. However, now that the property market has been on the decline mortgage companies in the UK are starting to review their mortgage arrangements and their mortgage customers.
It is this increase in monitoring which has led to the revelation that mortgage fraud is literally costing hundreds of millions of pounds in the UK. In a bizarre turnaround, the recession and the property market collapse have come together to reveal problems which until now had remained very much under the surface.

Gross mortgage lending in February was up 6% month-on-month at £9.2bn to the lending showed in January.
The CML’s said lending in the first two months was “broadly in line” with its forecast for £150bn of lending in 2010 as a while, though the figure is down 6% on last February and marks the second worst February in the last 10 years.

Mortgage providers Nationwide and Halifax report price falls of 1-1.5%  last month.
Given the short-term weakness and distortions in the housing market, in addition to signs of more properties coming onto the market, it was perhaps unsurprising to see falls in some of the monthly house price indices in February,” he said.
UK lenders, including Lloyds and HSBC, have all made great claims at their results announcements about the amount of financing they are making available this year.

If you have 50% deposit available then Yorkshire Building Society has launched its lowest ever two-year fixed rate mortgage at 2.99%.

The mortgage is targeted at those who own atleast 50% of their home their home or to homemovers down sizing or moving sideways and remortgagers with a large amount equity. YBS says that four in ten borrowers own more than half their home and its big deposit mortgage joins a strong of good smaller deposit deals it has recently launched.

The up to 50% loan-to-value mortgage comes with a fee of £995 and early repayment charges apply until the deal period runs out.

A two-year fix at 3.09% is also avialable for those with a 40% deposit, with a £1,195 fee.

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has warned that any increase in unemployment,interest rates or further falls in house prices could force millions of overstretched families into mortgage arrears. Read the rest of this entry »