First Mortgage News

The property market in Scotland has undoubtedly faced many challenges during the course of 2014. The start of the year was dominated by the implementation of the Mortgage Market Review (MMR), which saw the tightening of lending and affordability criteria. There was considerable concern its introduction would disrupt the market, however, the mortgage sector has […]

In his Autumn Statement yesterday (3 December 2014), Chancellor George Osborne announced changes to the Stamp Duty thresholds. These changes come into effect from 4 December and it is good news for most home buyers. The key change is that the property sale price is broken up into the different rate bands, rather than paying […]

The recent rate war in the mortgage market has witnessed lenders dropping rates to all time lows in light of recent speculation of an interest rate rise next year. In April, lenders had to contend with the new market affordability rules (as part of the mortgage market review or MMR), which resulted in reduced lending. […]

Help to Buy Equity Loan scheme in Scotland has seen a great deal of success since the introduction, with over 4000 new build purchases expected to be completed by the end of the financial year. However, as a result of this success the allocated funds for 2014/2015 have now ran out. At this point Link […]

In 2013 we opened our first First Mortgage branch outside of Scotland in Gateshead and this week saw our expansion into England take a step further with the opening of our second branch in the North East, in Newcastle city centre. Philip McGuire, Mortgage and Protection Consultant commented on the opening of the city centre […]

Since the growth of financial price comparison sites many people have been turning to these to assist in making their financial decisions in place of a financial advisor. Although there are of course lots of financial products which can easily lend themselves to being compared such as home insurance and savings accounts, this is not […]