Helping you keep your finances healthy!

How many of us could do with a ‘helping hand’ to get on the housing ladder?

The old way—save a deposit and find an affordable house—is tougher than ever. The housing market is still flat as a flounder. Mortgages are still scarce. Savings interest is miserable. Incomes are falling and inflation rising.

So if you’re a first time buyer, or want to be, can you afford much more waiting around?

Legions of hopeful first time buyers saw their dreams of home ownership vanish in the credit crunch, when mortgage deals that let you borrow over 90 per cent of the property value seemed to disappear overnight.

If you think it's difficult getting on the mortgage ladder when you're a would– be First Time Buyer, you're right – we've noticed that too.

But there's a whole bunch of people who have it a lot worse.

If you’re thinking of buying a home for the first time or if the time has come to move house, you’ll have lots of questions to ask, from the future of the housing market, to just where interest rates are going.
 
We focus on just five key questions that you need to consider before making a decision, from “Will I be able to get a mortgage in the first place” to “Is a fixed or tracker rate best for me?” and “Can I really afford it?”
 
Read on to find out more…

A clutch of new mortgage offerings designed to tempt first-time buyers into the market has caught my attention. After all, remember, the Bank of England has just revealed mortgage lending for the first three months of this year fell a staggering 87% since the same period three years ago. It seems that despite the recent [...]

It’s a reasonable sum, but would the prospect of saving £1,368 persuade you to buy your first house? That’s the saving Nationwide has estimated the average new entrant to the property market will enjoy as a result of the stamp duty holiday introduced in the last budget. The measure, perhaps Alistair Darling’s last decisive act, [...]