| Acceptance | When you are offered and accept a mortgage offer from a lender this is what you need to sign and return. |
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| Applicant | The term used by an estate agent to refer to you when you are a potential buyer of a property. Agents will often classify you as hot, warm or cold depending on your proceedability! |
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| Appraisal | When selling your house an estate agent will 'appraise' your property to determine a current value for it.
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| APR | Stands for 'Annual Percentage Rate' relating to interest on a loan . This is a legal requirement to quote this in regulated contracts. |
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| Arrangement Fee | Some lenders may ask for this fee for providing or 'arranging' a loan. This can be added to the loan but interest is payable on this for the term of the loan.
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| Assignment | The transfer of ownership from one person to another. For example if you buy a leasehold property ownership is 'assigned' to you via the contract.
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| Base Rate | This is the lowest rate of interest a bank will charge when it lends you money and is used as a benchmark to set interest rates for borrowers. This rate set by the Bank of England and is reviewed monthly by the Monetary Policy Committee. Lenders will charge borrowers a margin above the base rate. Currently the margins are far higher than used to be the case as Banks look to re-capitalise.
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| Bridging Finance/Loan | You may need 'Bridging Finance' if you are buying a new property before selling your current house. This is to 'bridge' the gap before you have sold your property so as to complete the buying process of your new property before selling your existing home. This is a "closed bridge" and lending rates are better. If there is no exit then this is called open-ended bridging and perceived to be higher risk and reflected in the rate.
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| Broker | This is a person who advises on mortgages and loans, known as a 'mortgage broker'
They will either be regulated by the FSA direct or they will belong to a Network who in turn will be regulated by the FSA. |
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| CAM | Stands for Current Account Mortgage. Your mortgage behave like a large overdraft and your income and expenses all go through the one account.
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| Capped Rate | The maximum set interest rate you will pay on a mortgage for a set period of time. This means that the interest rate cannot go higher than the capped rate during the specified time period, usually the first few years of the loan. These products often come with a "collar" in case rates dip too low. The collar ensures that in this event the lenders still makes a decent return.
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| CCJ | This stands for County Court Judgement. If you have a judgement against you for defaulting on a debt it may mean you are turned down for future loans or pay a higher interest rate. This is because your credit file is marked and the record stays for 6 years. If you pay off the CCJ within 30 days of the judgement date no entry is made on the credit file and your credit history will not be affected.
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| Chain | This refers to a sequence of buyers and sellers. Most people who sell their homes are also buying at the same time. There can be a 'chain' of several buyers and sellers, each dependent on each other for the sale and purchase of their new homes. If one buyer or seller drops out the whole chain may collapse, leading to a domino effect where the paperwork for several properties is delayed or cancelled altogether.
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| Chain Free | This is when the owner of property doesn't need to sell the property in order to buy another, thus it is offered chain free. This is referred to as an upward chain. Where the buyer also has nothing to sell then there is no downward chain either.
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| Collateral | Your house is 'Collateral' when used as a guarantee you will repay a loan to your lender. If you do not keep up with repayment your house could be sold by the lender to get back the money they have loaned you. This is also referred to as "security"
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