Barclays to lend up to £30,000 more with enhanced affordability rates

Barclays has become the latest lender to enhance its affordability rates, enabling customers to borrow more when buying a home. 

Affordability rates have been cut for residential purchase and remortgage applications, with a family potentially able to borrow up to £30,750 more.

The change is the latest in a range of moves made by Barclays seeking to make home ownership more achievable for first-time buyers and existing homeowners, with the introduction of several new propositions and updates to its lending criteria already this year. These include Mortgage Boost, which allows family or friends to ‘boost’ the amount that can be borrowed towards a home without having to lend or gift money directly, and a zero deposit mortgage for Right to Buy applicants. 

Barclays has also increased the maximum loan amounts for high-LTV purchases across all of its mortgages, to £640,000 for houses and £310,000 for flats, enabling more buyers to access homes in higher price brackets with a 10% deposit.

Lee Chiswell, head of mortgages at Barclays, said: “We are delighted to increase the amount we can lend to customers looking to buy a home. We know there are many challenges facing people right now, whether it’s a first-time buyer trying to pull a deposit together or a family looking to move house. Improving our affordability rates could help make many customers’ dream home a reality, while continuing to have strong measures in place to ensure that they can make payments on their mortgage.” 

Earlier this month, Nationwide announced changes to mortgage affordability assessments, following HSBC and Lloyds Banking Group who enhanced their mortgage affordability assessments last month.