As we bring our ‘In Focus‘ series across Mortgage and Property Investment Magazine to a close today, Sam Kirtikar, CEO of The Mortgage Broker, shares his perspective on navigating mortgage resilience in a fast-moving, higher-rate environment. Sam explores why, in today’s volatile market, strong advice, along with careful structuring, is essential to delivering better long-term outcomes.
Today’s market is volatile, and brokers are dealing with lenders repricing at speed, products being pulled or amended at short notice, and in some cases, same-day deadlines to secure existing terms. This absolutely causes behavioural changes. It alters how borrowers view risk, how landlords assess their cash flow, how first-time buyers think about affordability and how existing homeowners may approach refinancing their home.
More importantly, it highlights the need for good advice, as in a market like this, costs cannot be momentarily judged purely on the immediate rate. Every situation needs to be considered over the full mortgage term and within the wider context of the client’s circumstances, and where mortgage brokers need to be at their best.
Too often, affordability conversations are still treated as a simple borrowing exercise based on the rate available today, when in reality, they need to go much further than that. The question is not simply, “Can this client get approved?” It should be, “Does this structure still make sense if costs remain elevated, if rental margins tighten, or if the client’s wider financial position changes?” That is the more responsible and commercial conversation, and it needs to happen every time, even where rates are time-critical.
For brokers, that means spending more time on proper affordability modelling and scenario stress testing and not just reacting to what works on day one. It has to look sensible if the client faces higher monthly costs, a change in income, void periods on an investment property, or a need to refinance again in a less forgiving market. Clients will not always know to ask those questions themselves, but good advisers do.
For residential borrowers, resilience starts with an honest assessment and highlighting whether a client is stretching too far, trying to maximise loan size, or focusing too heavily on a payment that looks comfortable now but could become fragile later. Good advice often means slowing things down, adjusting expectations, reviewing deposit position and cash flow, extending the term carefully where appropriate or considering a different product structure altogether. This is where better advice wins every time.
There is also a more modern challenge developing here where clients are arriving with quick answers from generative AI tools, comparison sites and online calculators, and they often want immediate certainty. Speed is useful, and digital tools absolutely have their place, but quick answers can create false confidence when the bigger picture has not been properly assessed or when calculators aren’t updated with daily changes to income multiples.
The role of advice is to ensure that this speed and urgency are supported by informed decision making and not providing clients with false reassurance. Understanding real options, the trade-offs involved and the long-term costs of getting a decision wrong when locked into a fixed term. A lower initial rate may reduce the payment now, but still lead to higher overall cost and, where a longer fixed rate may provide certainty, it may incur early repayment charges when wider plans are not considered from the outset.
Homeowners looking at remortgaging through a simple product transfer as a quick and convenient solution face these challenges every day, as they haven’t utilised an independent adviser to understand the wider market options. Convenience is not its own strategy, and for remortgage clients, these principles are more prevalent. Good advice can start the review early, understand the range of full options properly and give clients room to make an informed decision based on facts rather than assumptions. Leaving things too late is where mistakes happen because it reduces options, increases pressure, and can lead to decisions being driven by urgency rather than suitability.
Within the current market where lenders are changing rates quickly, advisers are often working to very tight deadlines to secure existing products. When rates can move within hours, and application windows can close the same day, early engagement becomes critical. Good pipeline management is no longer just efficient administration. It is part of protecting client outcomes.
For landlords and portfolio clients, the conversation needs to go even deeper as buy-to-let is becoming more complex, and margins are increasingly tighter. In this environment, resilience does not come from simply finding a better rate, but rather from understanding the strength of the overall structure. Are there opportunities to improve cash flow, reduce unnecessary leverage, simplify borrowing, or restructure debt sensibly across the portfolio? Advisers working with investment clients should be reviewing the full picture, including the need for tax advice where appropriate, rather than focusing only on the next product expiry or today’s interest rate.
This is where experienced brokers add real value, and the right approach may be to stagger decisions, protect stronger assets, reduce exposure on weaker ones, or question whether every property still serves a clear purpose in the portfolio. Higher cost environments have a way of exposing weak structures, and although it can be uncomfortable, it often highlights those that will produce stronger decision-making.
There is another important part of resilience that should not be overlooked, and that is protection. Where household budgets are tighter, the financial consequences of illness, loss of income or death become even more serious. Advisers supporting resilience properly should not treat protection as an afterthought but consider it part of the same conversation.
Ultimately, mortgage resilience is not built through guesswork, but structured advice, thorough reasoning and solutions that hold up under pressure over the term of the borrowing. In a volatile market, the brokers who stand out will be the ones who bring clarity, challenge assumptions and help clients make decisions that remain suitable, sustainable and affordable long after the initial rate has been forgotten.
