More First Time Buyers Looking For Loans
The current relatively low price of housing in the UK at the moment and the prospect that prices could increase dramatically once the economy begins to recover properly, is encouraging many potential first time buyers to make a special effort to find a suitable home owner loan or mortgage and get themselves on to the housing ladder while they can.
The news comes from the estate agent Rightmove, who say that more than 25 per cent of people who were looking for a house within the next twelve months were first time buyers wanting to take advantage of cheap loans and cheap house prices.
The survey also found that around a third of all first time buyers expect house prices to be higher than they are currently in twelve months time, compared with just 22 per cent at the same time last year.
The largest concern amongst first time buyers is still that of raising sufficient funds for a deposit to meet lenders strict loan to value maximums, as well as being able to afford the monthly loan repayments.
However, over the course of the past few months there has been a significant increase in the number of home owner loan deals which offer high loan to value levels of 90 per cent, or even 95 per cent in some cases.
More encouraging news for first time buyers is also that, whilst high loan to value products have been particularly expensive in the past, these are now becoming cheaper as lenders are becoming more comfortable with the risks of a high loan to value deal.
Although they are still not as cheap as a loan deal which only allows 75 per cent loan to value, it has been reported this week that the average rate on a 90 per cent loan to value deal has now fallen to below 6 per cent.
