Self-employed and people in the UK with a bad credit history are finding it easier to obtain a mortgage, according to the independent market Datamonitor. Their research published this summer shows that the number of people who had previously been considered as being too high a risk to be able to borrow money for a home, are now being offered mortages. Datamonitor suggest that the lending banks have eased their rules because the mainstream market is saturated. In fact last year the rate of growth of lending to people who were previously considered too high a risk, was double that of "mainstream" UK mortgage lending.

Although on average 9 million adults a year are refused mortgages because they have too low a credit score, an estimated £ 40 billion in mortgage loans was awarded to people who either had a history of bad credit, or were self-employed. This is a rise of nearly 10% compared with 2003 and is evidence of the banks relaxing their credit rules to open up new markets.

Self- employed and high risk creditors have not only seen an improvement in their chances of obtaining a home loan, according to Datamonitor. The number of people who were previously considered "unsafe" self employed or those with a poor credit history

Who work for themselves or who have had previous debt problems will find it easier to get a credit card too, rising from 9.5 million to 13 million by 2009 according to a Datamonitor forecast.

Put simply, mainstream banks and credit lenders are finding it harder to find new customers in the mainstream market, and may be easing their rules to award credit to groups previously thought to be too high a risk. This may may be good news for these peole who have found it hard to get credit in the past. Some analysts, however, are warning of increased levels of bad debt in the future.

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