For most people, buying a property is the biggest single investment of their lifetime. Few purchasers can afford to buy outright, so the decision to take out a mortgage and the selection of an appropriate product is likely to be very important.

There was a time when building societies provided almost all the finance for a house purcahse. However, thanks largely to the repeated rounds of demutualisation that swept through ranks of the building societies in the last decade, banks have now taken a large share of the market, with specialist direct lenders also enjoying plenty of new business.