Mortgage Changes in UK
Over the past two years there have been a number of changes in the mortgage market with a decrease in the amount of available lenders and a large increase in the amount of mortgage products. If you add this to the fact that lenders are now employing much harder rules as a result of mortgage regulators pressure then it seems borrowing money to buy a property is harder than ever. In addition, for people who purchased in the past and then moved over seas, coming back and finding a decent deal seems to come with fewer options.
Because of the credit crunch many lenders have all but disappeared. Some of them were bought out by bigger entities and some others are simply maintaining some of their power because of large contributions from tax’s payer’s money to keep them going. In fact, the majority of lenders have moved out of the UK completely and gone on to what seems like lower risk lending. For example, the “buy to let” program is nowhere near what it used to be. There is nowhere near the amount of competition there used to be and as if that is not enough, the impaired or sub-prime credit market is hardly even in existence today. Lenders are looking for cases that are cut and dry with little to no risk. For this reason almost all of them are limiting their lending to residents of the UK who are looking to buy property in the UK.
These changes have made buying property in the UK more difficult than it has been in many years. One can only hope that things begin to look up for the market soon and that obtaining mortgages becomes as easy as it has in years past, prior to the economy problems.