Over the years there have been large changes in a lot of areas of the mortgage and income protection insurance markets, here we concentrate on one of the more recent. More and more people have chosen, over the last 20 years, to turn to the buy to let mortgage industry in order to boost their potential funds when they come to retirement age. We will cover some of the main reasons for this change below.

Many of the public have lost confidence in some of the pension plans offered by their firms and the Daily Mirror fiasco was possibly the start of all this unrest. It came to light that Robert Maxwell, chairman of the Mirror Group, had been siphoning off funds from the workers pension fund for his own personal use. What Maxwell had been doing was only discovered after his death which was rumoured as suicide. This resulted in many of the workers at the Mirror Group losing out on their pensions, some of whom had contributed for over 30 years. This also had an effect on those workers who were involved in personal pension plans due to company pensions not always being made available for everyone.

During the last few years the terms of many company pension plans have altered so that those in company schemes have no idea what pension they will receive. Over the course of years gone by, if you had worked for 40 years and been involved in a company pension plan for that time, you would be able to retire on an amount equal to two thirds of your final salary. However this has proved too costly for the employer so now most firms offer what is called a money purchase scheme. This means the money the employer and the employee have contributed to the scheme will form a pot of money that will be used to purchase an annuity, which is in effect a guaranteed pension for life. The rise in the number of buy to let mortgages came as a direct result of the uncertain future that a lot of pension schemes seemed to have.

It is well known fact that over reasonable periods of time property prices do increase so buying a property as an investment vehicle should generate a profit when sold. One of the other advantages of buy to let is that in most cases the money derived from renting is paying the monthly mortgage premium. It also means that they have control over their own destiny and are not reliant on the stock market, in which the majority of pension contributions are invested. A lot of people who choose to go into the buy to let market will end up buying a number of properties over time to increase their earning potential.

So what is the future for buy to let mortgages? The Financial Services Authority are due to bring the buy to let market under their control so there will be changes as a result of it becoming regulated. The changes to the buying side of things are unlikely to be that drastic. You will still need 25% deposit and proof that the rental income will be 20% to 25% more than the mortgage payment. For those investors who have seen the growth in property values, even allowing for a downturn for 18 months or so, they will surely still continue to build their portfolios. Even when they retire they will still be receiving the rental income from their properties or they could be sold if the market is right to boost their retirement fund even further, whatever they choose they are likely to be getting more money than when they purchased.

Please remember that whenever taking out any type of mortgage that if you do not keep up with repayments you risk losing your property. For this reason some form of income protection insurance is recommended to cover you in the event of you being out of work for any period of time.