The government’s Support for Mortgage Interest (SMI) scheme will be undergoing a major overhaul next year. The current scheme entitles current applicants government relief from mortgage interest for people who are claiming Universal Credit, Income Support, Jobseeker’s Allowance and Pension Credit. About half of these claimants, it is reported by The Telegraph are elderly pensioners. The structure of the current payment scheme gives relief on up to £200,000 of the mortgage or

The UK Finance trade association today reported that mortgage approvals dropped to the lowest levels in 13 months. The report mentioned that the October figures demonstrate a 3% drop in mortgage approvals compared with same month of October last year. This, according to The Independent, appears to be interpreted by some economic analysts as the inevitable start of a downturn for the UK housing market. The graph data from UK Finance also shows an interesting trend in mortgage

The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee announcement yesterday that interest rates would be going up by 0.25% to 0.5% caused ripples in the mortgage market. The effect was felt even before the announcement was made. Due to a growing economy along with rising inflation the expectation that the interest rate would go up had already been established before the MPC had cast their votes, and few were surprised when the Bank of England had set the rate rise as public policy

After ten years the Bank of England finally announced it is raising interest rates from 0.25% to 0.5%, by a seven to two vote by the Bank's Monetary Policy Committee. We'll look at three reasons why mortgage owners may still be in a false sense of security. 1. It's been ten years since the last rate rise The recent rate rise was just before the financial crisis of 2008, which saw lending temporarily frozen. This month’s rate rise however was widely expected, but at this point