Have you noticed the days have started getting longer? Given some of the pessimism at the moment, I think quite a few people have succumbed to SAD, or seasonal affective disorder. Why not think about some reasons to be positive? For example, the Mortgage Strategy awards are in a few weeks so even ...

Santander’s confirmation that it is to enter the BTL market is good news for brokers and also for short term lenders like ourselves. Next year I believe we will see a number of lenders opt to go into the BTL market for two reasons, firstly the market for low LTV super prime customers is being ...

Last week I was out and about attending our roadshows, driving up and down the country in a 1966 Routemaster bus. The discussions have been great, especially those that focussed on how we can all work together to make 2012 a better year. A lot of the conversations were about how we get ...

Now that we are more than halfway through November it is a good time to start thinking about 2012. What any good firm will have done is a business plan. This will at the least detail key objectives, income targets, costs and how the tasks are going to be achieved. I would recommend that all ...

There are a number of reasons to be positive about the mortgage market at the moment, although you have to look hard to find them. There was £362bn gross lending at the peak of the mortgage market back in 2007 and at that time there were 25,000 brokers actively selling mortgages that works out ...

There were quite a few positive stories in last week’s Mortgage Strategy and while I believe we are in for a tough 2012, there might be a twinkle of light at the end of the tunnel. A number of lenders increased their maximum LTVs, Nationwide softened its new-build policy and GE Money Home ...

Last week I was looking at the Financial Services Authority’s statistics on the market share of mortgages done by intermediaries versus those done by direct lenders. We are all aware that things have been tough for the past few years but there has been a quantum shift that doesn’t make good ...

I am sure readers must have seen HSBC’s statement recently about how 81% of the best mortgage deals have been done direct over the last year, but what the statement lacked was any balance so it was more akin to an advertisement. First, it sought to discount an intermediary deal that appeared ...

There has been a fair bit of comment about manual underwriting versus credit scoring and I have given my fair share of input over the years. But I thought I would reignite the debate as we are about to make a change to our near-prime process that will help brokers. I have had a lot of feedback ...

Our recent poll of over 2,000 mortgage borrowers has thrown up some interesting facts, some of which I will publish here over the next few weeks. The survey aimed to understand the perception and behaviour of customers so we could draw their attention to the benefits of using a mortgage broker. ...