NatWest is one of the largest mortgage lenders around.  In 2010/2011 they were voted the best first-time buyer mortgage lender by ‘Your Mortgage’. Their different types of mortgages available have some attractive offers such as a £250 cash back on certain mortgages, no product fee and you will need only a 10% deposit on certain mortgages.

If you are a First Time Buyer then you will need to know how much you will be able to borrow. At NatWest they calculate this for you according to your personal situation. This will involve them checking out your income and your monthly expenditure such as credit cards or loans you may have. As a mortgage is one of the most costly outlays in your lifetime, you must take into account not only the repayment cost but the interest you will have to pay. NatWest offers First Time Buyers repayment mortgages, this is where monthly repayments finance the capital and also the interest on the mortgage (that’s to say the monthly repayments only cover the interest payable).

Fixed Rate Mortgages at NatWest offer an interest rate which is set for an acceptable period of time giving you the luxury of knowing exactly what to expect. An example of such a mortgage is a 2 year Fixed Rate Mortgage at 2.65% up until 31/11/2013 with a follow-on variable rate of 4% requiring a minimum deposit of 40% and a product fee of £999.

Also available at NatWest are Tracker Mortgages, this type of mortgage tracks a separate set of interest rates and at NatWest they follow the NatWest Bank Base Rate, this has continually tracked the Bank of England Base Rate though there is no guarantee that it will always do so. This Base Rate can of course move up or down. An example of a typical Tracker Mortgage is an initial rate of 2.19% plus 1.69% which tracks the NatWest Bank Base Rate until 31/11/2013 with a follow-on variable rate of 4% and a minimum deposit of 50% and a product fee of £999.

Another type of mortgage is the Offset Flexible Mortgage which is a really good means of allowing your saved money to work hard for you. If you have such reserves then potentially you might save yourself thousands of pounds in interest on the mortgage and also be allowed to pay your mortgage off more rapidly.  Whatever happens you can always draw on your savings whenever you want. Such a mortgage requires you joining your savings and current account balances to your mortgage and then you will pay interest on the remainder only. For example if you have a mortgage of say £50,000 with savings of £4,500 and your current account has £500 you would only pay interest on £45,000.

Another type of mortgage on offer at NatWest is a shared equity mortgage. This can only be applied for if you are purchasing your property via a Government backed shared equity plan. The plans that NatWest works with presently are HomeBuy Direct which is obtainable in the UK for some recently built properties and its aim is to help purchasers who earn less than £ 60,000 per year and are unable to purchase on the open market. The other plan is LIFT which is known as Low-cost Initiative for First Time Buyers and is a scheme designed to help people in Scotland who are on low or modest incomes in order to purchase their own property.

NatWest is a really good mortgage lender and well worth checking out.