Can I Still Get A Secured Loan As I Am Self Employed?
Nov 19th, 2009
The secured loan is as the name suggests a form of loan that must be secured against some sort of colaterral. When you are talking about a secured homeowner loan, the security involved is your home. This shouild make you consider the repayments very carefully before commiting yourself, as surely you do not want to place your your home at any risk whatsoever?. A secured loan is an excellent way for a homeowner to borrow, because it first of all comes with a good rate of interest, and therefore it is a wise move to use your priviliged position as a property owner to obtain the very best interest rates that are available.Secured loan lenders being responsible lenders always ascertain that a prospective secured loan borrower has sufficient income, and will in no way become financially overstretched if they were to be granted the secured loan. The income affordability varies a little between secured loan lenders, but basically the rule of thumb is that they allow 40% of an applicant’s gross income to cover their outgoings. In this instance what is taken as outgoings is the monthly mortgage payment, the proposed secured loan payment, and the payments on any unconsolidated loans and credit cards.Sometimes for applicants who have higher earnings 50% of their gross salary is used when calculating income. The exact same rules apply to self employed prospective borrowers. In the past, that is in the good old days before the recession started two odd years ago, the self employed could do a self certification of their earnings. It was simply a matter of writing on a billhead or on a plain sheet of paper accampanied by a business card that that they were self employed, what their occupation or profession was, how long they had been self employrd and how much their net profit was each year. No further proof was required. Consequently some self employed were prone to exagerate their income to obtain the secured loan, or mortgage that they wanted.It is only human nature to do something like this to get what we want, but extremely foolish to lie to obtain a secured loan that was on occassion unaffordable. What is the point in certifying that you earn £100,000, when in reality your earnings are half that figure? Nowadays, self certs. have ceased to exist, certainly at a good interest rate. Secured loans are still available for the self employed, but secured loan lenders require at least an accountant’s certificate and on some occassions full accounts.This is a sensible move and it meanns that not only employed but also self emplyed applicants will not be overstretched. There are however still a couple of secured loan lenders who accept self declarations, but at 50% maximum loan to value, and the interest rates are also pretty high at over 20%.APR. The answer is that secured loans are still available to the self employed, but that the underwring criteria is much less lax than before.






