First-time buyers not alone in mortgage woes
September 24, 2007 by admin
Filed under News, News-Mortgages
The recent credit crunch will hit first time buyers and other mortgage buyers equally hard, the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) has warned.
The trade association for the mortgage lending industry said that the tightened lending criteria being employed by most providers in the wake of the recent credit squeeze would not hit first time buyers any harder than the rest of the mortgage market.
Bernard Clarke, a spokesman for the CML, said: “First-time buyers have had affordability problems for a considerable period of time. Those have been driven by the rise of property prices relative to incomes, and that’s much more significant for affordability.
“I have no reason to suspect that the range available for them will be affected any more than it will for other buyers, but we have already acknowledged there may be some restrictions in the range of products available and some effect on the supply of mortgages in the market place.”
The current credit squeeze has already seen Northern Rock left in hot water, while many other providers have been quick to up their rates as well as tightening their lending criteria.
Most recently, provider Alliance & Leicester upped the rates on all of its two year tracker mortgages by between 0.1 per cent and 0.2 per cent.
