Frozen expat mortgage market thawing

According to UK-regulated specialist broker Offshoreonline.org, more and more lenders are returning to the sector with competitively-priced deals. Towards the end of 2008, lenders simply withdrew from the market or only looked at applications on a case-by-cases basis, Offshoreonline managing director Tim Harvey says. He says by the start of 2009 there were "virtually no lenders in the market" and average deposits needed were around 35% of the purchase price. However, Harvey says banks and specialist lenders are beginning to dip their toes back into the water and 80% of loans are now a...