Hodge enhances professional mortgage criteria

Hodge has announced a series of enhancements to its professional mortgage criteria, including broadening the occupations it will lend to and increasing the maximum age.

It will lend to both established professionals and younger professionals by changing its maximum age criteria to 75 at the point of application and to 80 at the end of the mortgage term.

The list of occupations has expanded to include mortgage brokers, IFAs, investment bankers, teachers, nurses and IT consultants, alongside many other occupations.

The maximum age at application is now 75 and the maximum age at the end of the term has risen to 80 (earned income up to the age of 80 is considered).

Interest-only is available and will be assessed on an interest-only basis for affordability.

Emma Graham, business development director at Hodge, said: “We have made these criteria changes again in response to what our intermediary partners are telling us and what their customers need in a professional mortgage product.

“By making these criteria enhancements we can help provide more complex income related mortgage solutions to a wider group of customers who were previously underserved, while also offering the same flexibility and personal customer service Hodge is known for.

“The changes in our age criteria also reflect our further understanding of this market. We know professionals often have careers that go on until much later in life, so their incomes may be even more complex and include income from pensions and investments, for example. We wanted to be able to support professionals at every stage of their career and believe we can now do so thanks to these changes.

“We have extremely specialised in-house teams here at Hodge who are well versed in both complex incomes and the changing property market landscape, and so we’ve become more comfortable with lending to a wide range of professions, those with diverse incomes as well as non-traditional types of properties – such as our recent addition of lending on properties above six storeys.

“The number of criteria enhancements we have made across all of our products in recent months demonstrates how important broker feedback is to us. We want to listen, learn and provide what they need, and we hope these changes to our Professional Mortgage product will help many of our intermediary partners and their customers.”