Michael Sterios

The independent mortgage broker industry in Australia is still young and should prosper again after the credit crunch The industry is yet to fall under a national regulatory body in order to give it credibility, however this is planned

Future millionaires were abandoned by the thousand by both mortgage lenders and the property courses that had previously filled their heads full of dreams While buy-to-let mortgage products were disappearing from the lenders’ best buy tables the various courses and companies operated by the so-called property gurus were disappearing from the property investment game

Unemployment is certainly a statistic that prudent mortgage brokers should keep an eye on during the coming year and beyond Recent dramatic decreases in the Bank of England Base Rate will hopefully provide some sort of relief for businesses that are heavily financed and could have a knock-on affect of reducing the need for them to lose staff in order to survive

Rewind a couple of years and the media was awash with stories of property investment successes and buy-to-let miracles Mum and Dad investors throughout the country, and indeed the world, were becoming millionaires with the help of unprecedented capital gains on their often small property portfolios

Self-certification mortgages have endured a rollercoaster ride over the last few years It seems only yesterday they were hailed as an innovative product and a Godsend to millions of self-employed workers who failed to reach the requirements of standard home loan products

Estate agents, magazines, newspapers, websites, and even mortgage brokers were enticing people to buy almost any property they could get their hands on citing extraordinary historical capital growth rates as a basis for expecting the same growth in future years Had properties around the world continued to grow at such alarming rates it is likely that the next generation would find it impossible to buy a home anywhere in the civilised world

It would be hard to find anyone in the Western world who has not head of the credit crunch by now So much has been written and spoken about one of the biggest financial disasters in history that it seems almost as though society has become engulfed in it