Market Harborough offering sporting professionals a mortgage

by Aaron Strutt

Jul 24 2015

Market Harborough Building Society has launched two mortgages targeting professional athletes.

In order to qualify, professional sportspeople including footballers, boxers, tennis players and golfers, will require at least a 30% deposit and borrow between £100,000 and £1.5 million.

Mortgage rates

Market Harborough’s most competitive rate is a five-year discounted mortgage at 3.5%. It has a 1.99% discount from the building society’s standard variable rate of 5.49%.

The arrangement fee is 1% of the loan amount and the overall cost for comparison is 4.2% APR.

The lender is also offering a term-tracker discounted mortgage, but it is 0.5% more expensive. The arrangement fee is also 1%.

Market Harborough will look at borrowers with contracts more favourably, especially if they are earning money from different sources or they have sponsorship agreements.

In order to make sure the mortgage is repaid quicker borrowers will be able to overpay 20% of the mortgage each year without charge.

Aaron Strutt, product manager at Trinity Financial, says: “We have spoken to lots of professional footballers and rugby players in the past and unless they are at the top of their game, there are not a huge amount of banks and building societies happy to offer them a sufficient mortgage. It’s good to see more innovation coming through into the market.”

Qualifying questions

Market Harborough will look at borrowers with contracts more favourably, but they are likely to ask applicants to show:

1. How long they have been with their current employer.
2. If their contract has been renewed before and the remaining term.
3. If the current contract is likely to be renewed, and if so, for how long.
4. The applicant’s age and their other expenses, including debts, loans and any other properties they own.

Private banks and high-street mortgage lenders

Trinity has access to a number of private banks and high-street mortgage lenders offering professional athletes mortgages.

In some cases they will offer borrowers access to their lowest rates even if they don’t have a large deposit and they are looking to borrow over £1 million. 

For help to secure a sportsperson mortgage, call Trinity on 020 7016 0790.