Don’t be fooled into thinking that cheap contractor mortgage rates are necessarily the best deals around.

Grant Shapps, the housing minister, recently called on mortgage lending companies to do more to help people who want to build their own properties.

83% of MPs think that their constituents should be receiving more help to enter the housing market. In London, the figure is nearer 100%, according to a recent survey.

The Residential Property Surveyors Association has sent a letter to Hector Sants, the chief executive of the FSA, asking him to investigate the way mortgage lending companies give advice to their customers.

Health-impaired home owners aged 60 or over, may be able to benefit from a new equity release scheme from Partnership.

Data released by the Council of Mortgage lenders last week showed that, although there was an increase in the number of home loans granted in April, the figure was still 1,000 down on the comparable period last year.

Mortgage lenders are once again hoping to entice homebuyers into purchasing short-term fixed rate products. Northern Rock and Santander are leading the charge having reduced the interest rates on their two and three year fixes.

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said last week that a UK house price index fell to a 4 month low in May.

Although mortgage rates may be coming down, application fees are doing the opposite. A recent study by moneysupermarket.com has discovered that fees have increased by 13% over the last two years.

People are reluctant to commit to a new contractor mortgage deal when their current arrangement expires because of continuing uncertainty over interest rates.

Contractor mortgage holders might be interested to hear that a leading mortgage expert last week described the major house prices indices in the UK as a farce and said they generated a misleading picture of the country’s housing market.

Platform, the intermediary mortgage lender of the Co-operative Bank, has cut the rates on its buy to let mortgages by 0.2% in a bid to get more business.