Buyers are facing yet more obstacles now with mortgage providers upping the stakes with tighter lending criteria. Here’s the latest, with lender’s ability to provide funds becoming increasingly debilitated higher deposits are being required from first time buyers.

As a result of the current climate the Co-operative bank is the latest lender to restrict borrowing to those who have 10% deposit or more. Other lenders, such as the Halifax and Woolwich have slightly increased their interest rates whilst only making other deals available to people who have 40% or more to put down as a deposit.

The sub-prime market is also not holding up well, which is no surprise. This is typified by West Bromwich, Mortgage Express and Nationwide choosing to change some of their deals to new ones, which now demand larger deposits or higher interest rates.

I’ve heard recently that a few lenders have withdrawn the 100% mortgage and the latest one to do this is the Mortgage Works which a subsidiary of Nationwide.

The banks tightened purse strings have had a knock on effect and that effect is increased demand. The smaller building societies are unable to meet this demand so many of them have had to withdraw certain deals in order to quell the demand.

This demand is set to increase even more throughout this year because over a million fixed rate mortgages are due to expire.

So with all this upheaval the best advice is to act fast if you want to move because mortgage deals are changing every week and a deal you could of got 6 months or even last month might not be available now.

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