Buying a house in the UK can seem complex and intimidating, especially for first-time buyers. “How do I buy a house” might sound like a silly question, but it’s really not, and it’s one that’s worth researching properly before you start the journey to home-ownership. With the right knowledge and preparation, it can even be…

How should you prepare your documents for a mortgage application? What documents do you need? When applying for a mortgage you will be asked for various documents in order to verify your income and identity. Having these documents prepared and ready can help to make the process a little smoother. So here are my top…

Why it’s so important to plan your remortgage. As we all know, interest rates are on the increase. However, when we look at the news it tends to focus on the Bank of England base rate. Whilst the Bank of England base rate is vital in controlling inflation and an indicator of what is going…

There has been lots of talk in the news recently about using 50-year or intergenerational mortgages to help younger people get on the housing ladder and reduce the gap between wages and house prices. However, mortgages already exist where a parent or grandparent helps the younger generation to buy a property. The lenders have numerous…

The Bank of England has recently announced they are going to scrap the affordability stress tests that were put in place following a review of the mortgage market after the 2008 credit crunch. The timing of this announcement is very strange for a number of reasons, with many feeling that while the country is in…

Many contractors worry that they won’t be able to get a mortgage due to their complex income structure. Lenders do assess income for contractors slightly differently to self-employed or employed applicants, but an understanding these differences can help to get the best mortgage for you. An experienced adviser who has specific knowledge in this area…

Three letters are all over your social media feeds, your inbox and the trade publications you read right now: EPC. Energy Performance Certificates have been required for any building being sold, let or constructed since 2007, and measure how energy efficient a building is on a scale from A to G. Scoring a building takes…

Death is a sad but unavoidable part of life, and in the insurance business, we have reason to think about it a lot more frequently than many people. Still, no matter how many of them I see, looking over reports on life insurance pay-outs is always sobering reading. The most recent reports from Aviva showed…