How is everyone finding the mortgage world at the minute?

917700

I am just curious. The lenders tightened their lending criteria, but lenders and brokers are still very busy. Is this because of the backlogs for the lockdown period? Or is this because more people are purchasing houses now?   

 

ACG

It is a combination of the 2. 

We are busy, we had a 2 week waiting list earlier in the month. That has come down in part because people have gone elsewhere and we had less enquiries at the back end of last week and early this week (which is normally as kids go back to school). 

But added to that, we have some applications which are very straight forward cases and we are 6 weeks in with no offer. Thankfully one of those cases is a couple I have done 4 mortgages for so they know it is not us. But I would say up until last month I was beginning to think there was no such thing as a simple case, we are starting to find some lenders who are working as normal, but those lenders are the exception at the minute in my opinion. 

917700

Do you feel the banks/lenders have less money or assets for their mortgage products? Obviously, the Bank of England response quickly to maintain the liquidity by ways of rate cut and QE. However, the government borrowed billions and billions money at the same time. In my personal opinion, I believe the Government bonds are much safer than any other assets, e.g. property mortgage, and any financial authorities will prefer to use their available cash to buy Government bonds first. 

It's hard to say how the market will looks like in the future months. The lending criteria could be tighten again and the lenders mortgage staffs could be cut to lower numbers.

ACG

Lenders seem happy to lend. 

They are slower, they are being more anal, they are tightening up on criteria and affordability, but they are still lending. I cant think of one declined application we have had this year so far. Look at the rates on offer, they are pretty good under 85% LTV, I seen a rate of 1.25% this morning with a lender. Even at the 85-90% LTV the rates are only where they were maybe 6-7 years ago (my first mortgage 8 years ago was 3.5% with a 15% deposit), 90% mortgages are around that now, if not lower. 

Lenders are also coming back to market, Bluestone and vida pulled out earlier this year, both are now back and Bluestone even reduced some rates yesterday. We are still waiting on one or 2 more lenders to come back but they are showing signs that will be before the end of the year. 

We dont really do much in the "vanilla" arena, we are more adverse although we do get our fair share of first time buyers and everything does seem to be moving, it just feels like we are walking through tar to get the mortgage for the majority of cases rather than the minority. 

917700

ACG said:

Lenders seem happy to lend. 

They are slower, they are being more anal, they are tightening up on criteria and affordability, but they are still lending. I cant think of one declined application we have had this year so far. Look at the rates on offer, they are pretty good under 85% LTV, I seen a rate of 1.25% this morning with a lender. Even at the 85-90% LTV the rates are only where they were maybe 6-7 years ago (my first mortgage 8 years ago was 3.5% with a 15% deposit), 90% mortgages are around that now, if not lower. 

Lenders are also coming back to market, Bluestone and vida pulled out earlier this year, both are now back and Bluestone even reduced some rates yesterday. We are still waiting on one or 2 more lenders to come back but they are showing signs that will be before the end of the year. 

We dont really do much in the "vanilla" arena, we are more adverse although we do get our fair share of first time buyers and everything does seem to be moving, it just feels like we are walking through tar to get the mortgage for the majority of cases rather than the minority. 

Lloyds announced their job cut plan for their Insurance and Wealth management teams.

But that's very helpful to hear these stories from you. It seems like the mortgage teams are safe and the banks will allocate more cash to their mortgage products.

LRmortgage

I completely agree ACG, cases that would have taken 2 weeks a year ago are now taking 6 weeks. 

I feel like I’m working very hard, but not getting far! 

So busy but every case is hard work even when it shouldn’t be! 

Joey1998

I got a very good rate with my mortgage (I feel anyhow) of about 1.25%. I am fortunate in that I must have been one of the most straightforward mortgage applications you can have. 
However, still took 5 weeks. And to be honest prpbably would have taken longer if I had not started getting frustrated and started to throw what little weight I had around. 
My main issue with the whole process was the lack of knowing what's going on. Being told an offer is expected on a particular day and then the lender randomly asking for more pointless information. Its their right, but people are trying to work their lives around these decisions so clarity would be nice. 
I came to terms with it eventually and my broker did well to get in it 5 weeks looking at some of the timescales here, I got in when it was mad, before it seems to have gone double mad.