Research highlights affordability and credit issues

May 28, 2023 by Brendan O'Neill

Property Market

New data that has been released by TMA Club shows that advisor enquiries related to product affordability and adverse credit issues accounted for a larger percentage received by its support desk during 2023 Q1.

According to this data, 68% of all enquiries that mortgage advisors made to its support desk during that three-month period were about residential loans, with affordability and credit being the main subjects. The remaining 32% of the total enquiries were to do with buy-to-let mortgages and the dominant subject among them was top-slicing, where lenders take from the personal income of borrowers to make up any deficit.

The main subjects of advisor enquiries for residential loans show that people are still struggling with the rises in living costs. TMA indicated that many of the questions concerning credit issues were down to advisors dealing with clients who may have defaulted on – or missed – payments and be facing County Court Judgements against them.

It went on to argue that advisors will need to do more research into the available mortgage choices for people facing complicated financial circumstances, as the numbers of these are rising.

It pointed out that a survey conducted by Mortgage Business Expo and specialist lender Pepper Money recently revealed that 15.1% of people in the UK had experienced credit issues during the past three years.

Most advisors who have the CeMAP qualification will be aware that the specialist market is going to become more important to them and their clients in the next few years.