Lending in Wales and Scotland were amongst top five criteria searches for the first time in April, according to the latest criteria search index from Knowledge Bank. These searches appeared both in the top five searches for equity release and self-build.
As the largest database of mortgage lending criteria held anywhere in the UK, Knowledge Bank’s monthly criteria index shows the criteria that brokers are actually searching on prior to product selection.
Equity release criteria sourcing had something of a shake up last month with a completely new set of criteria making up the top five most popular search categories. Taking the top spot for the first time was the search for lenders who offer ‘medically enhanced lifetime mortgages’. Whilst, lenders who offer mortgages on properties in Wales and those who offer a ‘no negative equity guarantee’ made up the top three searches in this sector.
The self-build sector continues the regional aspect to the April results with lending in Scotland the most searched for criteria in this category. As has become the norm for self-build, the search for ‘lenders offering the most generous loan to value’ features highly once again.
With more than one thousand buyers a month making use of the Help to Buy scheme, it comes as no surprise that this is one of the most popular searches performed by brokers in the residential sector. April is the third time in the past four months that ‘Help-to-Buy’ has appeared in the top five and it looks set to continue. These schemes, first launched in April 2013, continue to be sought after solutions especially for first-time-buyers as figures revealed by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, last week demonstrated.
In the bridging sector, searches for ‘second charge loans’ made a first appearance in the top five, while ‘regulated bridging’ remained at the top for the sixth month out of the eleven the tracker has been running. Interestingly ‘minimum loan to value’ featured in the top five of both the bridging and commercial categories.
Nicola Firth, CEO of Knowledge Bank said, “The criteria index shows us the challenges that brokers are facing in placing cases and how important it is to sort the wheat from the chaff. It is so frustrating for brokers to approach a lender on behalf of their customer thinking that they will be accepted on a product to find that they fall outside of criteria. Equity release is a good example of this; as the sector grows brokers are constantly having to search for different criteria including, as we’ve seen, where lenders will lend. With the scale and frequency of criteria changes in the market it is simply impossible for brokers to keep pace without a system to support them.
“It is also interesting to note the continuing popularity of the Help to Buy scheme and whether this will be affected now the first batch of recipients of this scheme start coming to the end of their five-year grace period and start to repay the loan to the government. There has already been some publicity over the extent and reaction to a possible payment shock for borrowers and so I will be curious to see if brokers continue to seek out these loans with the same vigour.
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