18% said there was no change, while a very small 2% reported that they are finding it easier to get a loan on behalf of their clients.
Not surprisingly, it is harder to arrange a mortgage for non-prime customers than for standard-status ones. While 45% of brokers reported they have always managed to find a loan for standard status customers, the figure dropped below 34% for sub-prime.
On average, so far this year each broker had 13 clients for whom they were unable to source a loan, with little variation among the different geographic regions of the country.
In most cases, they were unable to source a mortgage for a small number of customers (five or fewer), but 12% of them reported being unable to arrange a loan for 11 or more standard status borrowers; for 8% of them, the number of cases exceeded 20.
Asked to quantify to what extent borrowers are paying more or are affected by more stringent underwriting criteria, a huge 94% reported that cost has risen and 92% said criteria are tighter. This is true in all parts of the country, although the position is slightly more acute in the North, Scotland and Northern Ireland, where almost 97% said criteria were more stringent, and slightly less so in the South East where the figure was below 90%.
Other issues of concern to intermediaries were: the practice of some lenders offering better rates directly to borrowers (mentioned by 18 of them); rising costs and fees (9 mentions); and clients staying with existing lenders, and processing delays (both 6 mentions).
