A puzzled correspondent asks, “Is the HIP system still coming in next week on August 1st?”

Good question. Things have been so quiet on this front lately that would-be home sellers and purchasers could be forgiven for thinking the Government had forgotten all about it.

Home information packs were originally meant to become compulsory for all properties on the market after June 1, but then they were postponed.

In fact, HIPs are still due to be introduced on August 1, and anyone attempting to sell a four-bedroomed or larger house in England or Wales after that will need to provide one.

The pack has to contain copies of the title deeds, any recent planning permission or building consents on the property, guarantees for any work done on it, a local area search and an energy performance certificate.

The Government’s plan, apparently, is that once more assessors are trained, HIPs will also be required for smaller properties.

But it hasn’t set a date for this, so don’t hold your breath.

A correspondent wants to know how to go about taking sole ownership of a property she currently owns jointly and how much it’s likely to cost to remove her co-purchaser from the mortgage and deeds.

This is something I have personal experience of and, while I don’t want to depress anyone, I have to say the process was nowhere near as simple as you might expect.

When my husband and his first wife split up, even though he handed over his share of the former marital home as part of the divorce settlement, Halifax (why do my gripes always seem to be about Halifax?) refused to take his name off the mortgage.

Unfortunately, the admin fee it required – £160 – was the least of the problems.

Halifax said that because hubby’s ex-wife didn’t earn enough, she couldn’t take over the mortgage on her own.

So her new partner tried to add his name, but for some reason that was never fully explained, Halifax wouldn’t accept this.

For several years it insisted my hubby’s name remained on the mortgage for a house he no longer owned or paid for.

This, of course, meant he and I couldn’t buy together.

We could get a mortgage only on the basis of my salary, rather than our combined earnings, so the – very modest – house we could afford had to be bought solely in my name.

We’ve sorted things out now: his wife eventually sold up, cleared the old mortgage and moved on, and we were able to get a joint mortgage, but it was a long and stressful process.

So, getting back to my correspondent, I hope you find it easier to remove your co-purchaser from your mortgage than we did.

Provided your lender is happy that you can afford the mortgage alone, the actual process should be straightforward.

Fees for altering the mortgage paperwork will depend on your lender, but about £150 is typical.

The solicitor handling the transaction will deal with the deeds and may make a small additional charge for this.

(Of course, if your lender is especially mean it may treat this transaction as a whole new mortgage application, in which case the fees could run to several hundred pounds.)

There will also be a Land Registry charge for up-dating its records to reflect the transfer of ownership and change to the mortgage.

This will depend on the value of your mortgage – for loans of up to £100,000, it’s £40 and from £100,001 to £200,000, it’s £50.

Good luck - I’ve got my fingers crossed for you!

Ideally, we’d all be debt free by the time we’re nearing retirement, but circumstances can conspire against us.

An email I received today from a woman of 60 says: “I have had a mortgage in the past but sold my property and moved in with my husband. I now wish to obtain a property of my own.”

She earns £24,000 a year in a new job and wants to know how long she will need to work before she can apply for a mortgage and what length of repayment period she can expect to get.

She adds: “Do you have any information on buying/renting 50/50 with a housing association?”

The answer is that nowadays it’s perfectly possible to get a mortgage at 60-plus provided you have a reasonable income – which she does.

Lenders will want to see proof of salary, and in her case, if she starts applying now, it will help to show evidence of earnings in the recent past.

They’ll also want to know that she’ll have sufficient pension income to cover the repayments when she stops working.

If, for any reason, she can’t provide this evidence and they’re unwilling to lend at their best rates – which start at about 5.5 per cent for discounted variable rates and 5.75 per cent for fixes – they may be willing to give her a self-certification loan.

However, these are more expensive – rates start at about 6.25 per cent – because of the added risk involved for the lender in taking the borrower’s word about their financial situation.

Alternatively, offering a relative or friend to act as a guarantor will encourage them to consider her.

The key to getting a good deal, though, is to use a decent independent mortgage broker.

Only an independent professional can scour the entire market on your behalf – that’s why no borrower should simply head to their own bank or building society.

As for the mortgage term, about 40 lenders will take on borrowers of 60-plus and a couple will even consider the over 80s.

This means that, in theory, this lady could get a 20-year term, but going only to those that would allow a debt to continue to such an advanced age would seriously limit her choice.

To ensure a reasonable choice of lenders and deals, a borrower of this age should ask for the minimum term they can possibly afford.

Offering to repay the debt over ten years, for example, would give about 20 to choose from, including some of the biggest names.

A part-purchase, part-rental deal with a housing association can be a good way to cut costs at any age, and there is plenty of information on these on the internet.

Money search engine Moneyfacts.co.uk has launched an ethical personal finance section, where users can compare the various accounts and products on offer.

With more of us taking an interest in how financial institutions make use of our cash, this could be a very handy resource.

The Co-operative Bank’s latest ethical consumerism report says this area of the financial market is already worth £11.5 billion a year.

Sadly for its employees, the ethical bank isn’t winning a big enough share of this for itself.

It announced this week that it will be laying off 1,000 staff from its financial services arm.

Maybe someone from the Co-op needs to log on to Moneyfacts, take a look at the opposition and see how it could improve its offering.

Direct Line claims to be one of the UK’s most competitive car insurers, but not everyone agrees.

Even the report on which the insurer bases this claim says it would be most competitive for fewer than eighty out of 1000 hypothetical customers.

In other words, more than nine out of ten drivers would get a better price if they went elsewhere.

Of course, the quickest and easiest way to get a wide range of competitive quotes is through a price comparison site.

So it’s no wonder Direct Line is using its TV ads to try to convince people not to bother with these.

The more people that log on to the likes of Confused.com or Moneysupermarket.com, the fewer that will take cover from Direct Line.

I’m starting to sound like a broken record with my gripes about Halifax, but if they will keep bombarding my household with junk mail, what else can they expect?

This time it’s a personal loan and, apparently, there’s £13,000 “reserved and waiting” me.

Somehow I don’t think they really have put it aside in a pile with my name on it, but I’ll let that pass.

My real complaint is the interest rate: they are trumpeting the fact that it’s “just” 7.9 per cent.

They seem to be implying 7.9 per cent is some kind of bargain. Hardly.

I can go on the internet and get a loan from Moneyback Bank or Barclaycard at 6.3 per cent.

That may not sound like a huge saving, but if you were repaying £13,000 over five years, it would cost almost £600 more with Halifax.

Bizarrely, by going online I can get a rate of 6.9 per cent from Halifax themselves.

To add insult to injury, they want loan customers to take their repayment insurance.

But the leaflet doesn’t mention how much this might cost.

When I phoned the sales line to ask, I was told it was impossible to say as this was worked out individually.

So I went back online and made some calculations based on examples I found on Moneyfacts.co.uk which use Halifax’s own repayment cover rates.

It looks like it could add about £80 a month to that already inflated loan repayment.

No wonder they’re not keen to advertise the cost, as when I checked the price offered by independent provider Paymentcare.co.uk, it was around £10!

So will I be taking Halifax’s loan and repayment cover? Certainly not, and I hope no-one else does either.

Applying for a mortgage can be daunting, especially if your financial history isn’t the best.

I received an email about this the other day, which I thought might be worth sharing.

My correspondent already has a mortgage on a shared ownership basis and wants to buy a house the conventional way.

He writes: “My credit history isn’t great, but I have not missed a mortgage payment over the last three years.

“I now wish to purchase a house that I totally own. My salary is £28,000.

“How much could I borrow? (I’m looking in the region of £130,000.) And from whom?”

Let’s start with the second question.

If you’ve kept up with your payments for three years, you should find most mainstream lenders will be willing to consider you, and they should be your first port of call, as they’re far cheaper than impaired credit lenders.

Contact an independent mortgage broker and they’ll shop around on your behalf.

As for the question of how much, traditionally, most lenders would give up to 3.5 times your salary, allowing you to borrow £98,000.

But nowadays they’re often a bit more flexible.

Many will go up to four or even five times annual earnings, provided you don’t have many other debts eating into your cash.

In theory, this would enable you to borrow £112,000 or £140,000.

Discount deals are currently available from around 5.5 per cent and fixed rates from 5.75 per cent.

With the latter, the monthly repayment on a £140,000 loan would be almost £900.

This is a dangerously high proportion of your earnings, considering all the other costs of homeownership – and life in general – and if rates rise, this would increase.

If you couldn’t cope, you could lose your home.

Even borrowing, say, £110,000, you would have to repay about £700 a month, so think carefully about what you can afford.

This – rather than what you are able to borrow – is the crucial question to consider.

And do your sums carefully before you commit yourself.

Here’s a nifty little tool to help you keep your finances on track – and it’s free.

The Yorkshire Building Society is offering anyone who wants it a budget planner they can download to their PC or Mac.

According to the Yorkshire, while it’s more sophisticated than other free planners, which generally provide just a financial snapshot, it’s less complicated than most similar paid-for tools.

You personalise it to fit your spending pattern and use it to monitor your income and expenditure.

You don’t have to be a member to access the software, installation takes seconds – and it could prevent any more nasty end-of-the-month financial surprises.

So what are you waiting for?

Just head to www.ybs.co.uk/budgetplanner and press that download button.

I’ve already installed mine!

One in five new borrowers is taking out a mortgage worth at least 95 per cent of their property’s value.

With interest rates and house prices continuing to rise, many probably see this as the only way to get on the property ladder.

But I wonder how may are aware of what this could cost them?

Spicerhaart Financial Services says high loan-to-value mortgages are in greater demand than ever before.

Last month, 19 per cent of new borrowing fell into this category, compared to just 9 per cent at the start of the year.

Spicerhaart operations director Steve Cox observes: “There is no doubt that affordability is becoming a problem for the majority of homeowners.”

Indeed, but borrowing such a high proportion of their property’s value is not the answer.

Interest rates on 95 to 100 per cent mortgages tend to be higher, which means these borrowers are more likely to get into difficulties, especially if rates continue to rise.

Most loans of 90 per cent and above also come with a hefty higher lending charge (also known as a mortgage indemnity guarantee) – around £1,500 is typical for every £100,000 borrowed.

Whether you pay it up front, or add it to the loan – and pay 25 years of interest on it – an HLC is money down the drain.

And what happens if, as many commentators are suggesting, the crazy growth in property prices comes to an end or, God forbid, they fall?

Borrowers with high loan-to-value mortgages could soon find themselves facing the horror of negative equity.

Sell for less than you owe and the additional debt will haunt you for years, making it hard to afford another mortgage.

Default on it, and you’ll be in a whole other sort of trouble – and your credit rating will be wrecked.

Surely it would be cheaper in the long run to save a little more, borrow from family or even take a low-rate personal loan to avoid that wasteful HLC – and keep your mortgage debt down to a safer level?

Two cheers for Cheltenham & Gloucester.

It’s not often I say anything as positive as that, but the UK’s fourth largest mortgage lender has just announced it’s scraping exit fees on all new mortgages.

At a time when mortgage interest rates and fees are rocketing – the average arrangement fee is now a staggering £800 – it’s good to hear of someone doing the decent thing.

C&G’s exit fee of £225 was pretty much average among the big players.

Alliance & Leicester charges most at £295, while Nationwide is cheapest at £90.

Lisa Taylor, an analyst at website Moneyfacts.co.uk, points out: “C&G joins only HSBC, ING Direct and Stafford Railway Building Society in not charging an exit fee.”

She adds hopefully: “This could be the start of things to come.”

Don’t hold your breath – it’s not as if they’ve scraped exit fees on their existing loans too.

Now that really would merit the full three cheers.