Halifax has made affordability changes through an increase in its loan-to-income (LTI) cap.

The lender says that, where a borrower’s income is greater than £75,000 on a loan amount equal to or less than £500,000 at 85% LTV to 90% LTV, the LTI has been increased from 4.49 times income to 4.75 times income.

The changes take place today, 6 April, and concern applications started from this date, Halifax says.

On 4 April, Santander announced that it too is updating its affordability rates to coincide with changes to various tax changes and household expenditure figures as defined by the Office for National Statistics.

And yesterday, Great Matter Marketing Solutions published the results of a survey that showed brokers overwhelmingly seeing affordability as the key to better product development.