Good News For First time landlords From Thursday 7 May 2009 The Mortgage Works will once again be making its Buy to Let products available to first time landlords. These products will be available up to 65% LTV The Mortgage Works Managed Rate From Thursday 30 April 2009 Mortgage Works will be launching...

New sellers on the housing market raised the average asking price by 1.8 per cent in April, according to the latest House Price Index from Rightmove.co.uk, the biggest rise in more than a year. The rise in the average asking price represents the third consecutive monthly increase; the average asking...

A member of the Bank of England’s rate-setting committee said that mortgages which leave buyers with an immediate risk of negative equity should not be banned and that bank demands for big deposits from homeowners may have been “overdone.” Kate Barker, who was commissioned by the Government...

The number of attempts to hoodwink insurance companies has shot up in the recession. Figures from the Association of British Insurers found that 107,000 fraudulent claims were spotted last year, marking a 17% increase on 2007. Among the more brazen scams was a man who tried to claim for ‘recovery...

The Bank of England is not doing enough to help the UK property market, according to an industry group. The Association of Mortgage Intermediaries (AMI) has castigated the authorities for their inaction, insisting that the Bank’s latest policy announcements prove that has “its hands in its pockets”. AMI...

Lenders have turned down almost 9% of qualifying mortgage applications this year, compared to 2.3% in 2007. Comparison website Moneysupermarket claimed that all the applications were vetted prior to submission and appeared to match the product criteria, but were subsequently rejected when lenders found...

Northern Rock has tightened its lending criteria, meaning that thousands of existing mortgage borrowers can no longer use the flexible features of their deals. Northern Rock offered fully flexible mortgages, allowing borrowers to freely overpay money on their homeloans and then borrow it back or take...

The Bank of England has held interest rates at their all-time low level of 0.5%. Six cuts since October 2008, when the Bank Base Rate stood at 5%, meant there was little scope left for further reductions. The Bank has introduced quantitative easing, a method of expanding the money supply to try and...

More rate cuts are unlikely, the Governor said. Millions of savers are now suffering a nasty shock. Their instant access accounts are paying them almost nothing - on average just 0.17%, according to the latest figures from the Bank of England. Both saving and mortgage rates have fallen sharply as the...

A stolen bicycle can leave the victim broke as well as stranded - but is traditional cover your best insurance? When the brusque Australian played by James Coburn was on the run from a prisoner-of-war camp in the second world war classic film The Great Escape, he did something that happens more than...