AMI: Budget is missed opportunity for mortgage market

Robert Sinclair, director of AMI, said any measures to help first-time buyers should be welcomed in an effort to revive the housing and mortgage markets and that it was right to extend the Support for Mortgage Interest scheme. However, he said: "The FirstBuy Direct scheme will only aid a small number of buyers and the government should be wary of helping to shift new build properties that have been hard to sell. "The problem we face is lenders saying that funding is available and intermediaries struggling to get customers through the more stringent lending criteria being applied. ...