Yes, and the good news is that there are a lot more lenders available to you and unlike Shared Ownership associations, the developers do not discriminate against lenders with higher interest rates or arrangement fees.
However, they do sometimes try and block a purchase to certain lenders due to their turnaround times to issue a mortgage offer within the 30 days requested so that contracts can be exchanged.
Help to Buy mortgages are even available for people currently in an IVA or for people that were discharged from a bankruptcy more than 12 months ago.
One of the biggest challenges for borrowers applying for Help to Buy mortgages can be passing the Help to Buy calculator due to the higher interest rates on the mortgage, the maximum debt to income ratio of the household can’t be higher than 45% and this must include all existing commitments as well as the new proposed monthly mortgage payments which is stress tested at the lenders standard variable rate which is often higher than the mortgage you will be applying for.
It’s also important to understand that Help to Buy as of January 2021 has now been limited to first time buyers only. There are also now regional price caps in place. For more information on this please visit helptobuy.gov.uk
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