Virgin Money and Clydesdale Bank will now accept Forces Help to Buy loans as a mortgage deposit.   This scheme allows armed service personnel to borrow up to half of their salary, up to a maximum of £25,000 interest-free towards the purchase of a home, in a measure passed by the Ministry of Defence as “an enduring policy” in January.   The department says, “the aim of this scheme is to address the low rate of home ownership within the armed forces” and “recognises the positive impact owning a home can have during an inherently mobile career”.   Virgin Money adds that the loan is ..read more

Property agents are still “struggling with the decision” to return to in-person auctions or to remain online since the end of the pandemic, a NAVA Propertymark survey shows.   The three most common ways that homes are auctioned are online (which are not live), in-person (or ballroom) sales and live stream auctions, says the estate agents’ body in its first quarterly Auctions Barometer.   It says: “Several members noted that they have not yet settled on a permanent method of holding their auctions since the end of the pandemic.    “Online and livestream certainly have their ..read more

Five lenders will be piloting new predictive mortgage modelling software from Mortgage Broker Tools which will help them take a ‘smarter, more data-driven approach to product development’. The software, called MBT Sandbox, is designed to enable lenders to best build, price and deliver improved mortgage propositions. It gives them real-time data and advanced analytics to help support decision-making around products, pricing, criteria and affordability. Within the Sandbox, more than 60 criteria elements can be edited, including loan-to-value, maximum loan by mortgage type, repayment type, term ..read more

The Mortgage Industry Mental Health Charter (MIMHC) has launched a series of monthly video interviews called ‘Keeping the mental health conversation going’. MIMHC was launched by Jason Berry of Crystal Specialist Finance, Scott Howitt of Chartwell Mortgage Services and Andrew Montlake of Coreco. In the first video of the series, Berry speaks to Knowledge Bank chief executive Nicola Firth, also a founding member of the signatory, about the mental health framework she employs in her growing business and how she takes care of her own mental health. In forthcoming videos, Berry will be chatting w ..read more

Paradigm has added Darlington Intermediaries to its lender panel. Members of Paradigm Mortgage Services will now be able to access the range of residential and buy-to-let mortgages from Darlington, including for the more complex cases. Darlington offers a variety of specialist products including self-build, mortgages for expats and an income stretch for high earners. Paradigm says this strengthens the mutual’s offering for clients who are ‘not of the vanilla variety’. Paradigm director of mortgages Richard Howes comments: “As advisers will know, the mutual sector has often been the one pushing ..read more

Talk to many who work in the conveyancing sector as specialists in their field and you’ll probably be struck by how much they say the job has changed in recent years. What may seem a series of relatively simple tasks in order to get the client through to completion can be anything but, with the level of complexity having been ratcheted up, along with a far bigger burden being placed on individuals working in conveyancing. And that is just for those who are specialists. If they are having to continually address this in terms of staff training, recruitment, focus and overall resource, and are st ..read more

Dudley Building Society has announced plans to transform its core mortgage proposition for intermediaries after teaming up with a provider of cloud-based banking solutions. The 165-year-old society is investing in its digital platform to ‘significantly step up’ service to intermediaries by changing its mortgage origination journey. It has selected Dutch firm Ohpen to provide a mortgage origination and intermediary portal designed to improve the speed and efficiency of the decision in principle and application processes. Dudley Building Society chief executive James Paterson said: “The society ..read more

Foundation Home Loans has revamped its core buy-to-let and owner-occupied ranges, launching new products across both areas.   In the core BTL range, the broker-only specialist lender has introduced a new F1 tier – for clients with an almost clean credit history – with two- and five-year fixes at 75% loan-to-value, with rates starting at 6.24%, and a £1,995 product fee.    It also launches a new F1 large loan five-year fix 65% LTV product, available at 5.84% with a fixed product fee of £3,995. The minimum loan size for this product is £200,000, the maximum is £2m.   The firm ..read more

The amount of time it takes a landlord to evict abusive tenants will be cut by half, says the Prime Minister as part of a wide-ranging clampdown on anti-social behaviour.   “Anti-social behaviour undermines the basic right of people to feel safe in the place they call home”, adds Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on the launch of the government’s Anti-Social Behaviour Action Plan.   He points out: “The public have rightly had enough – which is why I am determined to restore people’s confidence that those responsible will be quickly and visibly punished.”   As part of a broad £160m pack ..read more

Allica Bank has extended its owner-occupier commercial mortgage range to cover interest-only terms of up to five years under the British Business Bank’s Recovery Loan Scheme.     The business bank says firms eligible for the loan of up to £2m, must have a turnover of up to £45m.   The new loan is currently priced at 25% basis points lower than the firm’s full commercial five-year fixed-rate owner occupier loan, on a fully amortising basis. This prices it at 8% up to 70% loan to value, and 8.3% above that.  The lender says the Recovery Loan Scheme, allows it to sup ..read more