Wayne and Jayne Emsley have been unable to take out a cheap mortgageThe City regulator is to ease strict lending rules to rescue 140,000 “mortgage prisoners” trapped on high interest rates because of tighter regulation since the financial crisis. The Financial Conduct Authority said it planned to relax some of the affordability rules that stop these borrowers, who are paying an average interest rate of 5 per cent, from taking out new fixed-rate deals. Mortgage prisoners are homeowners granted fixed-rate loans when rules were looser but who no longer meet affordability criteria, which were tightened in 2014. As a result they have gone on to their suppliers’ most expensive default tariffs, and face a choice between high repayments, or selling. A total of 140,000 are on the books of companies that are no longer lending or not…

Source: The Times January 11, 2019 00:00 UTC