Help to Buy: Watch This Space

Limetree Financial Services Limited

Help to Buy: Watch This Space

Back in October, James blogged about the newly expanded Help to Buy scheme and said:

“We’re waiting for more lenders to join the Help to Buy scheme. Right now, only two lenders – Lloyds and RBS – have said they’ll be taking part, and we’d like to see more.”

A couple more lenders have joined since then, but only four are currently offering Help to Buy products. This isn’t interesting in its own right, but the lenders’ reactions are.

In the meantime, other lenders have launched competitive, high-LTV (Loan to Value) products outside the scheme, and this is stirring the interest of brokers across the country. This is an exciting space in the market, because lenders who aren’t signing up to Help to Buy are still competing, and cutting their rates.

Mortgage Strategy has a good round-up you can read for more detail, but I want to point out a couple of quotes here:

Coreco’s Andrew Montlake says:

“To me the high LTV market looks like it will become the latest battleground in a rate war that will grow in intensity over the coming months.”

And London & Country’s David Hollingworth says:

“It [the 95 per cent LTV market] is still emerging as a market but we are seeing quite rapid change which has helped drive rates down.

We like this rise in competition, and are watching the market with increasing interest as more products and rate-cuts lead to more choice for customers. Give us a call, or stop by our offices, and we can talk at length about how much we are interested in the mortgage market. (And, of course, help you find the best solutions for your mortgage.)

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