We have reorganised the Mortgages and Homes forums

Brendan Burgess

Founder
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54,893
I was updating the the Mortgage Rates Best Buys and found the huge selection very hard to organise in a meaningful way.

Then I hit on the idea of having a Best mortgage for First Time Buyer . They generally are not concerned with anything below 80% LTV, so it was easy to do. This led me on to the idea, that it would be good to have a separate First Time Buyers' Forum - to deal with all the specific issues for FTBs. How much can I borrow? What is the legal procedure? Planning for a mortgage.

But rather than just set this up, it would be a good idea to review the layout of all the mortgage and housing forums.

The following are very discrete forums. It's usually clear which forum one should post in.

  • Mortgage Arrears 3,000 threads
  • Tracker Redress 1,000 threads
  • Joint Mortgage problems
  • Property Investment and Tenants' Rights 7,000 threads
  • Housing and Mortgage Arrears - policy issues
  • Affordable Housing and Shared Ownership
  • Location, location, location
  • The Local Property Tax

But for some other questions, there is overlap between the existing forums e.g. where should one post the news that ICS has cut mortgage rates?
And the Mortgages and Buying and Selling Homes forum is huge

  • The Fair Mortgage Rates Campaign
  • Mortgages and Buying and Selling homes 19,000 threads
  • The Switchers' Forum

How about restructuring these as follows:
  • First Time Buyers' Forum (would incorporate Affordable Housing and Shared Ownership)
  • The Mortgage Forum - Rates, why are rates so high, breaking out of fixed rates, switching, overpaying, mortgage protection insurance,
  • Buying and selling - Trading up, conveyancing,

There will still be overlap, but I think that this might be clearer.
 
The benefits of having forums as discrete as possible is that it's much easier to find an existing post dealing with your particular issue. For example, if you have a question about breaking out of your fixed rate, they would all be in the same Mortgage Rates forum.

The downside, is that there is a lot of overlap.

For example, FTBs will also be interested in some of the issues in the Buying and Selling forums e.g. a question on the seller delaying the sale.

At one extreme, we could have just one giant forum for Mortgages and Property.

At the other, we could have dozens of sub-forums.

It's a question of striking the right balance.

Brendan
 
Thank you for your efforts Brendan.

I think your logic is fine. Right now, buying and selling general queues like estate agents, asking prices, get mixed in with the rest, so splitting that away from the finance side and gov schemes makes sense.

I would definitely split the forum with 19k threads. The rest seem fairly sensible and aren’t overly bloated.

Not entirely different from the split you suggest but may trigger refinement of your idea;

3 forums representing the 3 major pillars of the housing and mortgage cycle;

1)”National Mortgage Policy and Rules”; includes all the high level stuff, the rules of the game as they apply to everyone (FTB or otherwise); the law, government schemes, FTB schemes, central bank regs. Perhaps FTB/HTB/ Shared Ownership specific stuff as a sub- forum but not necessary imho (initially).
2) “Mortgage Options and Selection”; now we know the rules of the game we need our individual strategy for securing finance; bank rates, brokers, switching, cash back deals, speed, requirements. Sub forum to deal with switching maybe?
3) The property - the price, the estate agent, presentation, the solicitor, decision to buy/sell.

Observation, the fair rates mortgage campaign forum has page 1 threads from 2020, suggesting it isn’t utilised as a main area and warrants becoming a sub forum, or being split and merged elsewhere. But perhaps that stat aside it has high readership stats? Albeit I suspect posting frequency and readership stats generally follow each-other. A lot of the fair mortgage campaign is rate news, and sits under mortgage options for me. I would post ICS reduced rate news into the current mortgaged, buying and selling thread, FWIW.

all the the switching, redress, joint mortgage forum could be sub forum of the mortgage section in both our proposed mortgage sections. Leaving just 3 main forums, maybe 4. That provides a funnel for people to post in the correct location, but at just 2-3 levels deep it isn’t a silly level of funnelling/ sub forums
 
Thanks for the suggestions.

I like the split between :

"The Mortgage - choosing and managing"
and
"The Property - buying and selling" which could incorporate location.

Or instead of "The mortgage" have "The finance" and incorporate mortgages, mortgage protection,LPT etc. Though 90% are about the mortgage, so it's probably better to have that name on the forum.

Not sure about all the "High Level Stuff" going into one forum as you describe it. A few of us like policy discussions and making submissions. But a FTB doesn't care about the policy - they just want to know how much they can borrow.

Brendan
 
OK, so this is what I have done so far.

Split "Mortgages and Buying Homes" into
Buy and Selling Homes
and
Mortgages, Mortgage Protection and Local Property Tax

I have moved the threads from the LPT fourm, Switchers' Forum and the Fair Mortgage Rates Campaign into the Mortgages, Mortgage Protection and LPT forum.

I have moved the threads dated 2021` relating to buying and selling homes into the new forum. It's a time consuming exercise, so getting the most recent ones done first is the priority.

Brendan
 
I would still break out the Affordable Housing forum as that is a special case with multiplicity of different rules, and doesn't apply currently to the majority of FTBs. Also many of the issues seem to be people who bought affordable homes 10 or more years ago, which is not an issue that would fit into the new forum.
 
I like the idea of combining the location section with the buying section.
 
lff12 said:
I would still break out the Affordable Housing forum as that is a special case with multiplicity of different rules, and doesn't apply currently to the majority of FTBs.
Click to expand...

I don't understand your proposal?

It is a separate forum, although a sub-forum of Buying and Selling homes


It has only 6 new threads this year which would argue for merging it with Buying and Selling Homes.

It wouldn't merit a top level forum equal to, say, Buying and Selling Homes with that level of activity.

However, if the government's proposals see the light of day and we get a lot of questions, we could promote it.

Brendan
 
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