Buying a house for the first time comes with numerous questions. Of course, one of the most fundamental is about your mortgage. When looking for first time buyer mortgages there are so many terms to come to grips with: fixed rate, capped, discount, tracker. How do you actually go about getting a mortgage? Who do you approach to get help, and have you any idea how much you might be able to borrow?

There is a lot of information on the internet which can certainly field some of the above questions. You should be able to gain an understanding of a lot of the terms involved with mortgages, and by using a mortgage calculator you should be able to get a feel for the amount of money you can afford to borrow ? and pay back!

The industry does cater well for first time buyers as most lenders want to get new customers on board. So there are 100% mortgages, guarantor mortgages, shared ownership deals and better interest rates for first time buyers in many instances.

The best way to approach your http://www.firstmortgage.co.uk/First-time-buyer-mortgage">first time buyer mortgage is to put yourself in the hands of a reputable mortgage broker or advisor. These people are not tied to a particular bank, building society or set of products, and have access to a wide range of mortgages. They will be able to find one or more that suits your individual needs and help you through the whole process.

Key Workers can also get assistance from the government for their first house purchase. Key Workers are those workers such as nurses, police, teachers. There are also some cases where help can be given by Housing Associations for first time buyer mortgages.

People with bad credit records may find it more difficult to find suitable first time buyer mortgages. Anyone with a county court judgement, who has defaulted on credit card repayments or who has been bankrupt comes into this category, and will be looking for a sub-prime mortgage. These have been in the news over the summer as the US sub-prime mortgage market all but collapsed and this has led to the global credit crunch. What it means for the average person with a poor credit record in the UK is that banks have tightened their lending criteria and have increased fees and interest rates for sub-prime mortgages.

Some first time buyers might benefit from a guarantor mortgage. In this case mortgage lenders give help to first time buyers by lending more than their rules would normally allow, as long as there is a guarantor ? probably a parent or guardian. In the case where the buyer cannot make a payment, the guarantor becomes responsible for making that payment. To get a guarantor mortgage the lender has to be sure that the parent would be able to make any missed payments, so they will look at the parent's income after assessing the main borrower, and make an offer of how much they will lend.

Many people looking for first time buyer mortgages will be students who have just left university, possibly with quite a level of debt already in hand. This makes finding a deposit very hard. Mortgage lenders understand this, and many can offer special graduate mortgages, which may be up to 100% of the value of the property. Their apparent generosity is based on the expectation that graduates will eventually find well-paid jobs.