So what are the choices?

• Self-Certified Mortgages. It is not necessary to provide audited accounts and to substantiate your income, although you will still be required to provide evidence that you can afford the monthly payments.

• If your business is well-established, and you can provide 3 years or more of audited accounts, showing a regular income, you should not have too many problems. Lenders are a lot more flexible than they once were.

As with other specialist mortgages, it can be worth getting the advice of an Independent Financial Adviser to make sure you get the right deal for you.

Already a Homeowner?

If you are already a homeowner (with or without a mortgage) then you might want to release some equity from your home to give you a cash lump sum.

This means that if you have paid off a significant amount of your mortgage and/or property prices have increased, you can benefit from some of the "profit" that is locked into your house without having to sell the house.

Lenders provide a variety of ways for doing this, but they are generally described as "equity release" mortgages.

Typically you will be able to get up to 95% of the equity in your home, given to you in a lump sum which you then pay back like a regular mortgage. This can be used to pay for home improvements, lifestyle changes, home repairs to almost anything, really.

Get a Better Mortgage Deal

Don't forget that just because you have a mortgage, it doesn't mean that you can't get a better one that will cost you less, or alternatively a mortgage with a shorter term so that you can pay it off sooner.

Check to see whether you want to find a more competitive interest rate, a long-term fixed rate deal or you want to decrease or increase the remaining duration of your mortgage. You will probably locate a lender who is able to offer just what you want, and could save you a significant amount every year.

Discussing your needs with an IFA can often help reveal the best mortgages, which sometimes come from quite minor building societies.

Big Bonuses, but a Small Basic Salary?

If this is you, then you might find it rough to get a repayment mortgage that meets your requirements. This is because bonuses and overtime are challenging to predict, not guaranteed and are normally excluded from your assessed income by mortgage lenders. This means you could end up being offered a much smaller mortgage than you think you can afford.

The answer to this could be a flexible mortgage. A relative of the interest-only mortgage, flexible mortgages have monthly payments which are interest-only, but enable you to make ad-hoc repayments towards reducing the capital sum.

For example, if you receive a quarterly bonus, every 3 months you could make a payment towards reducing the capital sum of your mortgage, whilst paying smaller, interest-only payments each month from your salary.

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