Hayley Buck has many years experience arranging mortgages on flats and houses for sale in Chiswick. Here is her overview on the latest deals.
The main lenders such as Northern Rock, Woolwich, Nationwide are still fiercely competing and have reduced their rates again this week which is great news for the Chiswick property market.
A two-year fixed rate now starts at 3.69% for buyers with 30% deposit, and great to see lenders' arrangement fees reduce slightly too from £999 to £595 on some deals.
With the base rate set to stay around 0.5% until 2011, tracker deals are still very popular. For buyers with 25% deposit there is a lifetime offset tracker deal at 3.75% (3.25% above base for the life of the loan). The deal comes with a free survey and £250 cash back. The £1499 fee can be added to the loan, plus, it has no tie-in period so people can switch to a fixed rate any time, penalty free.
Self employed
You may have seen in the news this week that the Financial Services Authority is looking to ban self certification mortgages. Properly advised and underwritten, 'self cert' is a valuable product for the self employed, and it will be interesting to see what measures underwriters will introduce to assess future cases.
As a broker, we can negotiate with the lenders and provide additional documentation to support the case, such as extra bank statements, the client’s CV and work history and Accountants projections, so we are very much still open to helping self employed clients with their mortgage arrangements.
Hayley Buck is senior independent mortgage adviser for Charles Cameron & Associates Ltd
