Last Tuesday a first-time buyer couple came to me with a 42,000 pound deposit, a combined income of 71,000 pounds and a decision in principle from their bank for 285,000 pounds. The flat they wanted was 335,000. The bank had not mentioned that another lender would stretch to 5.5 times income for their professions. We got them to 340,000.

I am Eleanor Hinsey and I have been arranging mortgages for a long time. This notebook is where I write up what I see every week: which lenders have changed criteria without announcing it, what the swap rate move this morning will do to fixed rates by Friday, how a remortgage from 1.9 per cent to 4.6 per cent actually lands in someone’s monthly budget, and the cases that nearly fell through and why.

Every case is real, anonymised, and worked in pounds. I write in the first person because I was in the room. I also write up my own mistakes: the application I submitted to the wrong lender, the client I let fix for five years in 2021 when two would have been kinder.

Each post ends with what I would do in the client’s position, not with a suggestion to seek advice, because that is what they came to me for.

Hinsey Mortgage Notebook is an independent UK publication. Nothing here is a personal recommendation; it is a broker’s notes from the desk.