"Since the average house price is now over £200,000, it made sense to upgrade our product plans to reflect this, by increasing the amount available."
The changes also cover remortgage and right to buy applications, and will come into effect this week.
In addition, Together has removed the maximum age limit on its consumer buy-to-let mortgages, where rental income covers 120% of total secured lending repayments. This follows the removal of the upper age limit on the lender’s first charge buy-to-let products last month.
Sales director Gary Bailey said: “We’ve had a number of referrals within £250,000 recently that we have accepted, and since the average house price is now over £200,000, it made sense to upgrade our product plans to reflect this, by increasing the amount available.
“We’ve already removed the age limit on our buy-to-let range so we were keen to apply this to the consumer buy-to-let mortgages as well. The UK has an ageing population, with 11.4 million people aged 65 and over, and according to the latest official projections this is expected to grow by 12% by 2020, so lenders are looking closely at age limits across different products. At Together, we apply our common sense philosophy on this and if the customer can show the required rental income, then age needn’t be an issue."