Santander change mortgage rules so higher earners with smaller deposits can borrow up to 24% more

Santander has boosted its loan-to-income ratio to up to 5.5 times, which will allow some joint income applications for high earners to lift their borrowing by almost a quarter.  

Santander is potentially offering to provide borrowers who have a deposit of between 10% and 15% of the purchase price with up to 24% more money than they would under their old rules. Many lenders are now offering more generous loan sizes, but this represents a significant increase.

Santander's new mortgage borrowing rules mean: 

• With a deposit of between 25% and 15% and a single or joint income of £100,000 or more, it could be possible to borrow an extra 10% compared to the previous lending rules.

• With a deposit of between 15% and 10% and a single or combined income of £45,000 but less than £100,000, it could be possible to borrow an extra 12%.

• With a deposit between 15% to 10% and a single or joint income of £100,000 or more, it may be possible to borrow an extra 24%.

Aaron Strutt, product director at Trinity Financial, says: “A range of lenders, such as Nationwide for Intermediaries, Barclays, Halifax for Intermediaries and Precise, have lifted their income multipes after the Financial Policy Committee changed its rules to allow firms to underwrite more high loan-to-value lending in July. 

"Just because the lenders are offering larger mortgage loan sizes, it doesn’t mean you need to take them. In many cases, people require slightly more generous affordability calculations to secure a sufficiently large mortgage for the property they want. There has been a pretty big shift recently from the lenders and they are keen to issue larger mortgage loans to more borrowers."