The Help to Buy scheme was rolled out in April 2013 and recently made headlines (albeit not necessarily front-page ones) by being rolled out to March 2023. While it may be a matter of debate whether the Help to Buy scheme is a useful scheme to help those struggling with house purchases or just a […]
Mortgages
The practicalities of property ownership
Romance can make the world a brighter place but as any long-term couple will know, in day-to-day life there are a lot of practicalities to consider when it comes to making a relationship work. One of these is considering how assets will be managed, in particular, who actually owns them and who pays for them. […]
Why property surveys are money well spent
If you like reading about the property market, you may have noticed that, over recent years, there has been something of a trend away from “let the buyer beware” and towards seller disclosure. In fact, buyers can now take legal action against sellers if they can demonstrate that the seller deliberately mislead them. Of course, […]
Understanding offset mortgages
With traditional mortgages, you take out a loan from the bank and you make monthly payments which either pay of the interest and a portion of the capital (repayment mortgages) or simply cover the interest with the capital being repaid at the end of the loan period (interest-only mortgages). Then there are offset mortgages, which […]
The ins and outs of leasehold property
You only actually own a property outright if you buy it on a freehold basis (or buy a share of the freehold), in which case your money pays for the property and the ground on which it stands (and sometimes the ground around it). If you buy a leasehold property then you simply buy the […]
Dealing with deposits
The mortgage landscape has certainly changed a lot since the days before the 2008 financial crisis. Now the key word for both residential buyers and landlords is “affordability” and although the concept of affordability is defined in different ways depending on whether the buyer is looking for a property to live in or a buy-to-let […]