The market is seeing a 'rate price war'!

It's always good to see a lender reduce their rates.  Over the past few days, a number of lenders have taken action and cut a number of rate offerings.  Some examples include Accord Mortgages who reduced some rates on selected fixed rates by up to 0.40%, Woolwich sliced a life time tracker rate by a huge 0.76% and other selected rates by up to 0.50%, the Halifax took 0.3% off some rates and the Coventry Building Society reduced some fixed rates by 0.20%.   All good news for the end consumer and might be a good time to look around if you are considering making changes to your mortgage.

The Ex Pat market is awash with enquiries from those living overseas looking to purchase back in the UK, in the main for a property to rent out.  Although it is a restricted market in terms of lender appetite, there are a number of specialist lenders who will consider, depending on the country of residence and nature of employment, with loans of up to 80% of the property value.   Normally a minimum valuation amount will be required, circa £150k and a minimum loan of £100k.   Most lenders will also require customers to be property owners in the UK or have had a mortgage within the last three years.

Finally, August has been a flurry of activity and caught many of us out, which is a pleasant and great surprise!  Of those approaching AToM, many are seeking straight forward simple human assistance having become confused by the huge amount of information currently available on the internet, or they've been turned away from the normal high street lender for no apparent reason, apart from maybe being told 'credit score'.  The majority are after the superb low rates currently available and also speed.  Many high street lender products are available through mortgage brokers and can often be dealt with much more quickly than with the lender directly.  But do also remember that lenders are incurring huge delays with processing and underwriting at the back end.  In addition, August’s great business volumes won’t have helped clear the back logs!