Nationwide has lowered the eligible income required for joint applicants from £100,000 to £75,000.

New applicants can now borrow up to six times their income if they are a home mover or remortgaging with additional borrowing, and have an eligible income of £75,000 or more for both sole and joint applicants.

This comes after Nationwide announced yesterday it was increasing its fixed rate and tracker deals by up to 0.35%.

The increase applies to products for first-time buyers, home movers, existing customers moving home and remortgage borrowers. Rates on switcher and additional borrowing products will remain unchanged.

Commenting on this, Trinity Financial product and communications director Aaron Strutt says: “More of the banks and building societies are offering up to six times salary these days to boost their lending volumes as they try to issue more mortgages, so there is a lot of competition in this part of the market.”

“Nationwide is clearly making this change to make it easier for borrowers to raise a sufficiently large mortgage to help them buy the property they want. In many cases homebuyers do not need to raise the full 5.5 or six times salary, they just need the more generous income multiple to enable them to borrow slightly more than the standard income limits.”

“This move is interesting timing as Nationwide has just bumped up many of its rates by up to 0.35%. When rates go up criteria needs to ease to attract more borrowers. ”

“Nationwide is already one of the main lenders offering income stretch mortgages especially via its first-time buyer helping hand scheme. A joint income of £75,000 means the higher income multiple is clearly available to lots more people even though many would prefer not to be taking such a large income stretch.”