Building Societies come out top in best mortgage table

New research shows out of the country’s 67 biggest mortgage lenders, the 10 most competitive providers were in fact not banks but building societies.

Unfortunately there were no Scottish lenders listed in the top 10 , and embarrassingly, the Royal Bank of Scotland was highlighted as being the poorest provider of them all.

An Edinburgh based mortgage information firm ‘mform’ collated this data and allocated the lenders’ rankings according to how many times they appeared in best buy lists each month for all their range of products, taking into account the full cost of loans, inclusive of fees.

With ‘mform’s’ findings, Skipton,Furness and Britannia are leaders in the league tables, with bigger/well known lenders such as the Halifax coming much further sown the table(36th to be precise).

Only one bank made it into the top ten and that was Giraffe (which is owned by the bank of Ireland).

A spokesperson from ‘mform’ wanted to remind borrowers that although a lender offered a great deal when they last took out a mortgage, the market is constantly changing, and every so often we should review our finances and shop around for the best current deal to suit our very own individual financial needs. He points out that the introduction of the internet has allowed regional lenders to widen their customer base, whilst on the other hand, the internet now widens the scope for borrowers to access far more companies and data to enable them to make a far more informed choice and hopefully then achieving the best possible deal on offfer.

Here are where some of the other popular lenders appeared in the tables:

• Abbey - 17th
• Scottish Building Society - 20th
• Standard Life Bank - 22nd
• Scottish Widows  and Intelligent Finance - joint place at 33rd
• RBS - bringing up the rear at 67th place.

During November only 83,000 home loans were approved. According to the Bank of England  this was the lowest figure since January 2005, hitting its lowest figure in three years.

Lenders predict further cuts in mortgage finance availability over this coming year, and the target group most likely to be affected by these cuts are first time buyers and those people who regularly switch their mortgages.