Inform 1st July 2022

A big remortgage opportunity is fast approaching for you and your clients – and Barclays can help you take full advantage.

There is an unmissable £129.7bn* opportunity (July to December 2022) and a significant amount of existing Residential and Buy to Let clients who will be coming up to the end of their current mortgage deal over the next few months.

Take a look at Barclays full market report here.

To calculate the percentage loan to value (LTV) when a product transfer (PT) is required, we use an indexed valuation figure which is updated quarterly by the Halifax Housing Price Index (HHPI). Ahead of the next changes to HHPI, expected in July, we wanted to take this opportunity to remind you that our online PT process allows you to produce an instant quote and illustration for your client, however the process does not allow you to save an application and resume.

If the illustration is not progressed through to offer, any future changes to the HHPI may negatively or positively impact on the LTV and therefore product(s) available.

To ensure the product is secured for your client, a PT application must be progressed through to offer.

Visit us online.

New build, shared ownership and resale price covenant (RPC) changes

From 1 July we are increasing the availability of new build, shared ownership and RPC scheme mortgages by increasing the maximum loan to value (LTV) available from 90% to 95%.

New build
The maximum loan to value (LTV) available for the purchase of new build houses/bungalows is being increased to 95% with new products available for all intermediaries and for properties built by all builders.

New build purchases above 90% LTV will be considered under the Mortgage Guarantee Scheme – with the ‘Homebuyer Special’ scheme selected when keying on Halifax Intermediaries Online – and the same criteria applies above 90% including:

• Minimum 5% personal deposit is required
• Product fees cannot be added above 95%
• Cash incentives are acceptable provided the loan, cash incentive and any product fee being added together do not exceed 95%
• Maximum loan amount of £570,000
• This must be the customers only residence and they must not have an interest in any other properties such as a second home or buy to let
• An enhanced credit score requirement will be applied to any applications on this scheme
• A maximum 4.49x loan to income (LTI) cap will be applied as part of our affordability assessment
• Current credit commitments will be deducted as ongoing in our affordability calculation even when declared as ‘to be repaid’ at or before completion. The loan amount must be affordable with these commitments deducted as remaining.

For new build flats the maximum 85% LTV will remain and for converted or refurbished properties the maximum LTV will remain as 80%.

Shared ownership
We are increasing the maximum LTV for purchases on the shared ownership scheme from 90% to 95% of the customers share. This applies for both second hand and new build purchases (houses/bungalows and flats), unless the property is a new build conversion or renovation where we will restrict this to 80% of the share being purchased. Any LTV restrictions in Scotland and Northern Ireland will continue to apply.

The customer must pay a minimum 5% personal deposit of the share being purchased. The deposit must be a minimum £4,000 and this excludes any deposit provided by a builder or housing association. Cash incentives are acceptable provided the total value of the loan plus incentive, and any product fee being added, together does not exceed 95% of the value of the share being purchased.

The ‘Homebuyer Special’ scheme would not be selected on shared ownership applications above 90% LTV.

As a reminder it is important on shared ownership applications that the correct rental amount, and on shared equity applications the correct interest payment, are keyed. For Help To Buy shared equity schemes in England & Wales a 3% interest amount should be keyed and for schemes with planned payment increases the higher figure should be keyed e.g. if in years 1-5 is 3% but increases to 5% from year 6, the 5% figure must be keyed.

Resale price covenant (RPC)
The maximum loan available is being increased from 90% to 95% of the discounted purchase price i.e. the personal deposit required is being reduced from 10% to a minimum 5%.

For new build properties purchased under an RPC (also known as Discount Market Scheme, DMS), the revised new build LTV limits will apply based on loan amount against the discounted purchase price i.e. 95% for newbuild houses/bungalows, 85% for new build flats.

The ‘Homebuyer Special’ scheme would not be selected on RPC applications above 90% LTV.

These changes apply to new applications started from 1 July only. The increased LTVs would not be available on an application started before 1 July. If an increase in the loan amount was required on an application started before 1 July a new application would have to be keyed from the start. If a Decision In Principle (DIP) had been keyed before 1 July the old LTV limits would apply if this was converted to a full application after 1 July and for the new LTV limits to apply a new application should be keyed from the start.

Our website Criteria pages will be updated from 1 July and our normal product change communications will be issued with details of the new products.

I’m delighted to tell you that from 9am on Monday 4th July our residential mortgage range will be back in action and open to new business.

Removing our residential mortgage and Holiday Let range was always going to be a difficult choice, but with record business volumes severely impacting our service levels, we knew it was the right choice for our broker community, your customers and our team.

The last two weeks have enabled our dedicated team of underwriters to work through the pipeline, ensuring our service levels are back where they belong.

We are incredibly grateful to you for all your continued support and understanding.

As a lender, we put personal service at the forefront, and as business development director, it’s something I’m incredibly proud of and spend a lot of time talking to brokers about. This commitment to service is what helped us make the difficult decision to take a break from new business.

Here’s what you can expect from our return:
• SLAs for DIPs – 48 hours
• SLAs for documents – 48 hours
• SLAs for fully packaged applications – 48 hours

Thank you for your patience, please get in touch with any queries or concerns you have. We look forward to being there for you and your clients in the moments that matter most.

Mark Todd, Key Account Manager – South at Bluestone Mortgages joins Dale Jannels, MD of Impact Specialist Finance to discuss Bluestone’s range of products and services.

The world has changed. We all know that increasingly complex lives mean you are seeing more customers with complex credit needs. Yet so many people still miss out on homeownership because the complex credit market remains underserved.

You need to know you have a lending partner that will work hard to say yes. That lender is Bluestone Mortgages…

Watch the webinar here!

Have a case you would like to discuss? Call the impact packaging team now on 01403 272625

Bank of Ireland amended their Bespoke LTV bandings so that all Bespoke products are showing on sourcing systems and they just have one Bespoke Product range, hopefully making life easier for you and brokers!

Please see the new LTV tiers below and click on the link to see the products on our website.

The cost of living is skyrocketing in the UK right now, and it’s hurting. Particularly for people who are struggling to get onto the property ladder or move up it.

The good news is you can do something about it. With the support of a specialist lender like TML, you can help new and existing clients weather the storm and realise their dreams of home ownership.

We’ve just published an article about the crisis, and how you can support your clients. It looks at:

• The causes of the current surge in inflation and the impact it’s having on the housing market, particularly FTBs
• The increasingly important role of brokers in helping people through the crisis
• How you can maximise support while winning more business
• How TML can help and what we are doing to support existing clients who find themselves in financial difficulty

We’ve always been about Real Life Lending, and it doesn’t get much more real than this.

Read why here.

Foundation Home Loans are a BTL specialist lender with thousands of portfolio landlords on their books, but why do brokers choose to use FHL for their portfolio BTL cases?

1. Pre-approval for £5 million in borrowing with FHL within the first 6 months of receiving a mortgage offer, to make it quicker and easier for that client to mortgage more properties!
2. We convert and upload your portfolio spreadsheet when the customer has 10 or more BTLs in their portfolio
3. Our ‘Copy application’ function on the Broker portal saves you time
4. Competitive rates
5. We are Limited Company Experts
6. We accept 24 different developer new build warranties
7. Various construction methods are acceptable (Please always refer to your RAM or Broker desk before submitting)
8. Flexible underwriting approach
9. Specialist property types

Contact your Regional Account Manager today to find out how we can make lighter work of your portfolio landlord cases.

New automated emails for valuation status in our broker portal

We are pleased to announce that we have set live the first 3 or 17 automated case status updates which will email you as a certain underwriting task is completed. We undertook some research recently and our analysis showed that a fifth of our case update calls were about the valuation status. Understandably, given the key role the valuation plays, advisers want to know when it has been instructed, when it has been booked, and of course when it has been returned.

Click here to find out what changes we have made.

So what’s been going on……..

The Market

• Since my last note we’ve seen base rate increases, perhaps not by as much as some were predicting, however we remain in a rising rate environment.  We have also experienced (and continue to) a frenetic rate change environment with Lenders being extremely agile on pricing, in the main to try and protect service levels, which has certainly kept everyone involved extremely busy.
• Remortgage and PT activity is certainly strong at the moment.  With the rates rising, coupled with October’s remortgage spikes coming up, we will certainly see this continue. The purchase market also remains busy; we are still seeing the supply / demand dynamic playing out, so despite the headwinds in terms of cost of living and the uncertainty driven from the war in the Ukraine, it still feels like we will continue to see a healthy market here too, at least in the short term.
• Today the Bank of England have announced that from 1^st August 2022, lenders no longer need to stress test by applying a 3% interest rate to their SVR rate, when assessing borrowers mortgage affordability.

Virgin Money and Clydesdale Bank

At the half year stage I thought it might be helpful to do a quick reminder of some of the key changes we have launched so far this year:

• Increased LTV’s for Large Loans and removed previous geographic restrictions on Clydesdale
• Expanded to allow cash incentives of 5% at 90% LTV and non-cash incentives now accepted without impacting the loan on Clydesdale & Virgin Money
• Improved eligibility for newly qualified professionals to be min income of £30K if qualified in the last 5 years for Clydesdale
• For Virgin Money we now will allow up to 2 satisfied defaults up to a combined value of £5,000 in the last 6 years

Most importantly though,  we want to say “thankyou” for your continued support.  It has been an extremely busy few weeks and months with some record daily business volumes and a high number of pricing changes, which have meant that service levels have been a challenge.  We are working hard to keep cases moving and have deployed a number of initiatives behind the scenes to help, however we are seeing a very high demand at present so please bear with us.

If I could say 3 things to help with service:

1. Please help by getting cases to us fully packaged / as fully packaged as you can
2. Use the live chat and emails for case updates rather than the phone lines
3. Stay close to your BDMS and their communications on SLAs alongside discussing new business enquiries

What else has been going on…..

The Green Agenda – the small things can make a big difference!

We gave ourselves a challenge in May to create more sustainable engagement at industry and national account events, and I am delighted to say that this has been a huge success with some great feedback from the evens we have attended. Instead of taking merchandise to our events that could ultimately end up in landfill, we have devised a fun game where brokers who visit us on our stands “win” a tree planted on their behalf or subscription to Cardon Neutral Britain to offset a years’ worth of carbon – effectively making them carbon neutral for the year! We have arranged for over 400 trees to be planted already and given the success of this we will continue to do more….. the little things can make a difference!

And finally……

Take a look at our recent article… See the bigger picture on sustainability

Here at The Mansfield, we offer interest only mortgages on a variety of fixed rate and discounted rate products as follows:

• Up to 75% LTV up to age 70 (70% between ages 70 and 85)
• Part capital repayment / part interest only is available (interest only element capped at max LTV detailed above)
• A variety of repayment strategies acceptable, including stocks and shares, sale of a buy to let or holiday home, property downsizing* and more…

*Property downsizing is available as a repayment strategy to allow people to repay the balance using equity in their property. There must be a minimum £150k equity in the property, or higher, to enable the applicant(s) to downsize to a reasonable quality home in the property locality.

Downsizing might be useful for those looking to raise capital in later life without the use of RIO or Equity Release. Take a look at our retirement case studies for an example of a remortgage on a high value property:

Retirement case studies

For more information about our products and services, including our affordability calculator and applying through our online portal, visit our website at mansfieldbs.co.uk/intermediaries.

On Wednesday 29th June we gathered our team to celebrate the 10th anniversary of CIExpert.

Want to help us celebrate?
A lot has changed over the last 10 years, both in the growth of our platform and within the critical illness world. Here at CIExpert we are proud to have provided many innovations and supported vast improvements to the cover available to consumers. Because at the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about.

We will be looking back over these innovations on our social channels and using the tag #10YearsofCIExpert.

We would love if you had some memories to share with us. Which advancements were significant for you? What are you glad to have seen left behind in the industry? Let us know!

Go to our Linkedin

Go to our Twitter

You need to start from the right vantage point to find the best financing, and what better place to start than with Vantage Finance.

In this short video, Joseph Aston, National Sales Manager, discusses the benefits of working with Vantage Finance here.

Why use Vantage Finance?

• We provide a consistently quick service; cases are acknowledged within 30 minutes, and we strive to deliver indicative terms within 4 hours.
• To ensure a smooth process, we offer you one dedicated point of contact all the way from your first enquiry to completion.
• Our company values – efficiency, expertise, communication, and determination – shape everything we do.
• Our extensive lending panel stretching across the high street, challenger banks, specialist lenders, and private banks, enables us to offer you unrivalled access to a wide range of products and rates.
• We provide a lifetime guarantee – if your client returns to us, you’ll always receive a referral fee.

Contact the team to find out how we can help you solve even your most complex client cases:

T: 01753 883195
E: enquiries@vantagefinance.co.uk
W: https://www.vantagefinance.co.uk/contact-us

Chorley Building Society is pleased to announce that Stuart Bryce has joined as Head of Business Development.

Stuart has 35 years’ experience in the mortgage industry, most recently working for BuildLoan. He has also worked for other building societies and spent over 20 years as a broker. We know his expertise and knowledge will be hugely beneficial to all those working with him and to our intermediary partners

Stuart commented: “The Society has a great spirit and a very proactive team driving the aspirations for modern systems and procedures, whilst combining the values of mutuality and a personal service. It is very much common sense lending at the Chorley, with some fabulous lending criteria that really helps brokers to thrive and I can’t wait to tell them all about it.

“I am really pleased to have joined Chorley Building Society to help this great business continue to grow.” Stuart takes the reins from Julie Goodwin, who is moving within the Society to lead the Products department.

Julie notes: “I’ve worked with the intermediary networks for many years and I know that Stuart will continue the excellent relationships that have been built.  I’m looking forward to taking the knowledge gained with brokers into my new role.”