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TODAY'S OTHER NEWS

Right to Buy debuts in top five most searched UK mortgage criteria

Right to Buy became one of the most-searched for criteria by brokers for the first time in July, according to Knowledge Bank’s monthly criteria tacker.

The results come after Boris Johnson’s hint earlier this month that Right to Buy might be extended to housing association tenants.

The phrase ‘interest-only’ made an appearance for the first time in a year, possibly due to a number of new launches in the sector in July.

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Cambridge Building Society, for instance, launched its first ever Retirement Interest Only (RIO) product, while Leeds launched a new 15-year fixed RIO. Leeds also revised its lending criteria to allow for the use of income drawdown pensions and a self-invested personal pension when assessing borrower affordability.

Other criteria search highlights include ‘payday loan’ – also appearing for the first time in the second charge sector – and ‘British national working overseas or offshore’, which was revealed as one of the most popular searches within self-build for the first time.

‘Commercial property’ also appeared in the top five within bridging for the first time since August 2018 while ‘commercial’ was in the top five buy-to-let searches for the first time in 11 months.

Knowledge Bank holds over 91,000 criteria from over 200 lenders. Brokers can search on unlimited criteria conditions for each customer.

Nicola Firth, chief executive officer of Knowledge Bank, comments: “Our tracker reveals a few shifts this month with interest-only making an appearance in residential searches for the first time this year, most likely as a result of a several new products and criteria changes to this sector.”

“It was outstanding to discover that we have seen almost 30,000 mortgage criteria changes year to date, which just goes to show the pace at which our industry is making changes.”

She concludes: “It is clear, brokers not using the systems are either spending a lot of their time chasing down the answers or possibly not always giving the best advice they could, as they are not fully aware of what all of the options were at the time the advice was being given.”

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