Brokers are on the look out for lenders which accept self-employed clients with just one years’ worth of accounts, research has shown.
According to search platform Knowledge Bank, the most searched for criteria in the residential sector in November were the self-employed and maximum loan-to-value.
Brokers have most frequently searched for self-employed options for three consecutive months, with recent figures suggesting almost three-quarters of self-employed would-be borrowers felt discriminated against by mortgage lenders.
Meanwhile, Help-to-Buy featured on the list for the first time this year, following an extension of the government scheme in the Autumn Budget.
Nicola Firth, chief executive of Knowledge Bank, said the criteria tracker was designed to show activity at the "coal-face" of broker activity.
She said: "As we approach the end of the year the pressure on brokers to find lenders for their clients’ mortgage needs becomes more and more intense.
"As a result it’s crucial that no time is wasted trying to pair borrowers with lenders whose criteria simply excludes them."
Ms Firth said whilst some searches remained popular month to month, new search topics regularly broke into the top criteria partly due to the ever changing and complex borrower requirements.
She added: "With this constant change it’s crucial that brokers use the tools at their disposal to make their advice process even more focused and productive."
In the buy-to-let sector, searches for lenders happy to lend to limited companies featured most frequently in November - a pattern matched by lender reports of landlords increasingly transferring properties to limited companies to navigate tax changes in the market.
Recent figures from Shawbrook Bank showed the proportion of buy-to-let mortgages completed by individual landlords had fallen from 68 per cent in the first half of 2015, to 34 per cent in the same period of 2018.
Meanwhile the proportion being completed by limited companies had doubled from 32 per cent to 64 per cent in the same period.
rachel.addison@ft.com
