Self-Employed Less Squeezed by Credit Woes

Posted 2008-01-10

Recent upheavals in the lending market have failed to tarnish self-cert mortgage availability, much to the relief of many self-employed business owners in Britain.

 

For many years the self-employed have depended upon self-cert mortgages to purchase property and homes. The Economic and Social Research Council reported that of the 29 million people employed in Britain, 13% are self-employed and eligible for self-cert mortgages.

 

Fortunately for this group of financial pioneers, the self-cert mortgage market has remained unaffected by the tightening of lending criteria in the mortgage industry, noted Andy Pratt, a spokesperson for Alexander Hall.

 

Mr. Pratt added that nonconforming lenders have been hit hardest by changes in financial markets but this has not affected the subprime industry.

 

Self-cert mortgages are generally backed by more established lenders, which allow them to adapt to changing conditions more favourably. Mainstream lenders that have been unaffected could give borrowers with good credit records the best chances of being approved for loans, the broker representative offered.

 

“All those clients who would have got a self-cert mortgage before have been able to get them even with the credit crunch,” he maintains. This is good news to self-employed Britons who are often unable to qualify for more conventional mortgage loans.

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