Coventry Building Society has announced the launch of a new set of mortgage deals aimed at customers and first time buyers that want long term fixed mortgages for the added security of a stable financial future.

As the economic state of the country continues to stand on unsteady ground, and the mortgage market starts to fall downwards again, the security of knowing the terms of a mortgage agreement for a lengthy time period is attractive to those who feel they will be remaining at the same residence for a significant amount of time with a stable income source.

Included in the new set of best mortgage rates available from Coventry Building Society is a five year fixed mortgage set at 3.58% for those that can afford a LTV of 65%.  There is an attached £199 booking fee and a £800 arrangement fee that borrowers should be aware of, although attached fees are becoming standard as the housing market starts to tighten back up.

It is expected that mortgage rates are going to increase over the course of the next year so those that have not yet taken advantage of the low rates of last year are encouraged to take a look at what is on the market before they make any final decisions.

Also offered by the Coventry Building Society are Flex fixed mortgages that are set for five years at 3.89% along with a 65% LTV.  The same fees are also attached to this mortgage product.  First time home buyers on the other hand may find the five year deal set at 5.25% and a low 10% required deposit is an enticing offer.

Also available to first time home buyers as part of the deal is a booking fee of £199, but no arrangement fee with the mortgage package.  As part of the first time home buyer package all successful applicants will also receive IKEA vouchers worth an additional £500.

Those that are not members of the Coventry Building Society can also take advantage of the offer, although they will have to pay an arrangement fee of £300 and the mortgage rate is set a bit higher at 5.49%.  Sales and Managing Director for Coventry BS, Colin Franklin, stated that their aim is to start the New Year off with great deals for those buyers who need a break in order to make owning a home affordable.

The regional forecast of HML is that repossessions are going to increase by about 7% over the course of 2012, with those who work in the public sector and those that are on SVR’s most likely to be affected by the increase in mortgage rates. The HML looks regularly at 800,000 mortgage accounts making their figures reasonable, but still terrifying for those who are concerned about their ability to afford their monthly payments over the course of the next few months or  over the next year.

The forecast continues to suggest that most regions in the UK will see small increases in their mortgage rates and thus in the amount of foreclosures that occur in these areas, but Northern Ireland will likely be hit the worst with a 1% increase in foreclosures. On the other hand, the South West region of England will most likely be the least affected with only about .25% of borrowers expected to be affected by the increase in foreclosures and repossessions.

This is due largely to where house prices are falling the most as this affects the amount of equity remaining in a mortgage and leverage that can be used to secure better loan terms. Director of business intelligence, Damian Riley, stated that the increase in repossessions over the course of 2012 will be the result of how many homeowners are already in arrears carried over from 2011.

He added that the CML figures show that there are over 27,000 mortgage loans that are already in arrears, with about 10% of the balance outstanding. These homeowners were not able to take advantage of the best mortgage rates due to their situation over the past year, and now will have no other choice but to face foreclosure.

Riley added that the base rate will most likely stay low throughout 2012, but the double dip recession that looks like it is on its way will most likely impact many household budgets, adding more pressure to those who are already badly affected.  He continued to say that most lenders will only offer forbearance in certain circumstances and that soon will be forced to take a much tougher approach to homeowners that fall behind, forcing the rate of repossessions to increase at a very fast rate over the next year.

Many building societies and banks are now offering new buy to let mortgages that are designed for non-professional landlords that want to complement their small portfolios, but borrowers need to be aware of the fact that not all of the offers are as great as they may sound.

This is because the banks are after amateur landlords simply looking to take advantage of the low house prices without the savvy that professionals have to take a closer look at the rates and what is included in the deal that is not as great at a second glance.

For instance, this past week Santander entered the lending market by offering its first buy to let mortgage products offering two new loans for those who only have a few buy to let mortgages.  In particular, the new product range is only available to landlords that own less than three properties or are simply looking to purchase their first home to use as a rental.

Those that meet the requirements can look at two offers for a two year fixed buy to let rate, but brokers are claiming that neither product is actually priced competitively. The Santander deal offers fixed mortgages that are set at 4.29% and include a deposit that is set at 60% LTV which is pretty hefty for a first time property buyer.

On the other hand, for those that need a lower LTV there is a 75% LTV available but the mortgage rate increases up to 5.19%. As the rates remain average for the market and the LTV’s are still pretty sharp, this is likely only going to attract those who do not realise that there are better options out there from other lending sources.

For instance, NatWest offers a two year fixed product that is set at 4.39% which is lower, but does include a £1,999.  Along the same lines, Accord Mortgages has a 4.84% deal with an attached fee of £1,995. Many new landlords will be put off  by the fact that there is a fee attached to the deal, however, when you work out the extra costs in the interest rate paying a bit upfront is actually a better deal than paying more over time in interest for the same loan product, making the mortgage products with fees actually the better choice.

Despite the fact that the average mortgage rate and mortgage payments were the lowest they have been in eight years during the month of October, lending fell by about eight percent during the month.  The CML (Council of Mortgage Lenders) stated that during the month of October there were about 44,500 home mortgage loans given out, which is a decrease of about 5,000 from the previous month and 2,4000 than last year during the same time period.

Also down was the amount of mortgages offered to first time home buyers which dropped by about ten percent compared to the rate seen in September. The news is surprising since the mortgage rates for October are now considered rock bottom with the average monthly payment for the period estimated to be about 12.3% of the average lender’s income.

This is the lowest monthly payment that has been recorded since January of 2004.  The improvement in mortgage rates would have been expected to make a home mortgage more affordable for first time buyers, but they simply were not out shopping for new homes during October, most likely due to a variety of reasons including the simple fact that they may have feared rejection and stopped trying to get in on the buying market.

Despite the low rates and the best mortgage rates seen yet this year, the CML also stated that deposit requirements for the first time buyers did not change remaining at about 20% for most potential new home owners which may be the other reason why home mortgages did not increase over the period.

With the economy unstable and redundancies commonplace, many first time home buyers that normally would have purchased their first home by now are reluctant to invest in a new home mortgage for fear they will struggle with the sums down the line.

Others simply are unable to meet the high deposit requirements even though the mortgage deals may be the best they have ever been. The amount of mortgage lending is expected to drop even farther once the November figures are released, given the fact that mortgage rates are starting to increase again due to the Euro debt crisis and other factors that have reduced the amount of lending that banks have available to offer.

The unstable economy has even prompted many to fear a double dip recession which would shock the housing market that had just started to recover.

The Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) has released a statement that the economic uncertainty in the UK will make it difficult to predict how the mortgage market will continue to function because while mortgage rates may stay low over the next year there will not be many people confident enough to take advantage of the rates.

Factors such as the eurozone debt, high unemployment, and the falling prices of homes will all combine to make most new home buyers wary of purchasing a new home and instead choosing to rent property.

At the moment, director general for the CML, Paul Smee, stated that the home loan market was stable even though there was a slight decline in the amount of people taking advantage of low fixed mortgages compared to September.  In fact, the amount of mortgages taken out during September in the UK was 48,200, but many of these were remortgages from savvy home owners that want to take advantage of low rates before they increase again.

During the month most first time home buyers had to meet deposit requirements of about 20% before they could secure a mortgage. The good news is that the number mortgages that were approved compared to those that were rejected were up by 3% when compared to lending figures from September of 2010.

Despite this fact, many mortgage lenders are worried about their ability to offer low mortgage rates in the future due to the fact that the cost of loans is starting to increase because interbank loaning now costs more.  The eurozone crisis knocked out banks’ confidence in lending to other banks making the housing market a bit harder to predict over the next few months according to Smee, because lack of loan confidence will hurt bank’s offerings to the public.

Smee went on to say that both remortgage loans and home values saw a drop over the past few months, but the market when looked at from a broader point of view is starting to look a bit more stable.  However, he added that with so much domestic and global instability at the moment it is hard to predict just how long this trend will last.

At any rate, during the third quarter of 2011 the number of home loans approved did increase by 16% when compared to the second quarter which is good news for the overall housing market.

The government announced yesterday that they are going to add new measures to the Energy Bill to make sure that landlords are forced into altering any homes that may be inefficient when it comes to the new Green Deal.

Chris Huhne, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, stated that the new bill will impose new regulations on rented properties that will force them to confirm to a higher standard of energy efficiency which has added meaning now that renting is a much more popular option over home buying due to the heightened mortgage rates and the credit crunch that has made purchasing ahome too expensive to many.

Outside of adding new regulations onto to landlords and their respective properties, the new energy buill will make it illegal as of April of 2018 for any commerical mortgage owner or residential mortage owner to let out a business or home property that does not have an energy efficiency rating of at least E.  The deadline is set seven years in advance so that all landlords of the almost 700,000 properties that call below this rating to improve their properties and confirm to the new standards.

For green minded tenants this is also good news because after April 2016 landlords will not be able to deny any ‘reasonable requests’ from their tenants not to make green improvements to properties so that even those who are renting homes can make sure that they are reducing their carbon footprint by changing the way in which they live.  The change in regulations is also aimed at helping tenants who are worried about fuel poverty and the increased costs of heating and electricity by forcing landlords to make the necessary improvements to make homes more efficient.

Huhn added that the new Green Deal regulations set forth a great opportunity for landlords to reduce the upfront costs of improving properties so that they are cheaper to maintain, better for the environment, and overall a better choice for most renters who are looking for a great deal to avoid getting locked into fixed mortgages that they may not be able to afford.  He also stated that landlords that do not follow the new regulations come 2018 will be punished so that by 2018 even the worst rented homes are brought into the new standard accordingly.

A recent survey conducted by Halifax indicates that roughly one in every three parents are supporting their children financially in the purchase of their first home with at least £10,000. In fact, roughly 35% of all respondents to the survey with children ages 18 to 24 said they would provide up to £10,000 while an additional 18% said they would raise the amount even higher up to £15,000. In fact, roughly eight out of every ten people looking to get into the property market reported that they required support from their family in order to purchase a home of their own initially as of late.

This comes at the same time that many parents themselves felt that the mortgage market has proven more difficult to enter now than when they first entered into the market, with 79% of families reporting a more difficult experience now than they themselves had. While this is particularly true for first-time buyers at the same time it has proven the same for investors as well – especially for those looking for buy-to-let mortgages as lending institutions make obtaining financing for a home purchase increasingly difficult.

Mortgage lending criteria changes have also created a large number of differences in the property market developing over the past few years with purchasers now being required to make roughly a 21% deposit to secure the purchase of their home. Three years ago this number was a mere 10%. As the demands increase the need for financial support from family increases as well, thus generating a significant amount of additional pressure placed on families as a whole to support purchases.

Recent surveys conducted by Santander have revealed some insight into many house buying trends throughout the UK. Namely the primary motivating factor behind choosing the location of a home is not work or other economic factors but instead the proximity of friends or family (though for those living within London’s city limits economic and transportation factors play a much more important role). Of those surveyed roughly 39% of all Britons stated that friends and family being nearby is their primary concern with purchasing a home, followed by 29% preferring easy access to work and 20% choosing homes primarily based upon costs.

Contrary to what many people have thought in the past the presence of a reliable hospital or decent education institution nearby plays a relatively small part in the location consideration process. In fact, homeowners surveyed stated that each of those are rank roughly in the 2% and 9% range, respectively.

While these figures may not be too surprising to some people (such as those in London who regularly consider proximity to public transport and work to be the primary factors) they do offer some insight into the UK property market for some consumers – particularly for many first-time buyers looking to enter into the real estate sector. This even holds true for many overseas investors looking to invest in the country and is the primary factor behind why London is the location of interest for many investors abroad due to family interest in the city.

While individuals are not advised to change their purchasing habits for the sake of owning a new home at the same time purchasers are being recommend to consider the primary motivation factors for owning homes when looking at areas for personal use or investment. These can easily influence overall property demand in some areas and can have a major impact upon future value depending upon specific consumer trends in your area, so be advised and look ahead toward future developments as well.

The weakened Sterling has proven a boon to many locations throughout the London area, attracting numerous overseas investors to the area and helping to spur on the recovery effort of the economy as a whole. In fact, reports indicate that overseas investment influence has helped with the procurement of roughly 20% of the total top-end properties within the city since early 2009 when times were particularly hard for many individuals.

This trend has continued throughout 2010 as a whole with many investors looking to take advantage of the weakened domestic mortgage market and secure key properties in many areas that would have remained unclaimed otherwise. The influx of capital ahs even assisted with the recovery of many key commercial areas that were suffering throughout the recession as a result of a weakened local purchasing groups having sway over the market.

Many experts feel that the level of foreign interest in London has always remained strong and will continue to support the city throughout the coming months and years regardless of what economic conditions may be at the time, though unfortunately for many other areas the same interest does not extend to rural settings. This is seen primarily as a result of many overseas investors simply having no in-depth knowledge of less urban developments, though for a number of local purchases this comes as good news due to the ability to avoid excessive competition on the market.

As property developers continue to shift their attentions more towards rural areas that are in much more affordable price ranges both for them to develop as well as for purchasers to secure individuals can expect to see significant new options open on the market in coming months. Nevertheless the current shift in trends may come too little too late for a large number of prospective and current home owners alike as house prices begin to fluctuate and decline steadily going into the winter months with low expectations for future recovery bolstering concerns. Increased restrictions on mortgage lending as well is causing many individuals to become tighter fisted than ever before over concerns of financial stability and many fear for the coming months at the end of 2009 and beginning of 2010 until market recovery begins once more.

Once a trend generally associated with the particularly wealthy or otherwise well-to-do, more and more young couples and middle-class families throughout the UK have begun opening their doors to individuals wishing to rent a room in their home in either a long-term or short-term basis. This has helped in many ways to offset the costs of many more costly mortgages and other loans couples are faced with today, especially in light of many mortgage offers becoming more difficult to come by and even buy-to-let mortgages being more difficult to obtain as a means of investment.

As the trend for letting continues to grow in many areas both domestic and overseas buyers thinking of letting out their property are being cautioned by many public and private groups alike. They say that before even considering letting out a room to a complete stranger that everyone should pay careful attention to all documentation available to them about the process and know well both their rights and responsibilities in the letting process.

All too often many people considering to let out one or more rooms to individuals end up finding themselves in difficult positions, dealing with undesirable elements within their homes and even handling vandalism that can end up costing considerable amounts to repair and return to proper working order. Without proper knowledge of what rights home owners have in relation to their tenants they may find themselves in dire straights many times, though knowing their responsibilities as well is important in order to ensure that no violations ever occur that could lend the home owner in trouble.

If you’re considering letting out a room in your home always be sure to check all documentation possible before opening up your home to others. As profitable as it may be it is also important to make sure you are fully prepared for whatever issues may come your way from time to time.