Fancy a loan ... only seven times your salary

Mortgages at seven times the borrower's income, loans at 120% of a house's value, first-time buyers clubbing together to buy a home... lenders may insist they are keeping the purse strings tight as house prices soar, but brokers are telling another story.

"We had Northern Rock in here a couple of weeks ago almost bragging that they've arranged mortgages at five times income," Mike Cook, broker for London & Country in Bath, said.

"They will also give you a 95% loan and then let you borrow another 25% at the same rate."

Mortgage "stretch" is the buzzword among brokers, who regularly bypass published maximum lending criteria. Halifax says its average loan to value level has fallen over the past year, but yesterday leapfrogged competitors and raised its published maximum loan to 97% from 95%, in order to help first-time buyers.

Some lenders will not even ask how much you earn and the average size of mortgage has leapt dramatically. "Our typical mortgage size is now £125,000-£150,000. Two years ago it was £75,000-£100,000," Sandy Paterson of Millfield Partnership in West Byfleet, Surrey, said.

Clubbing together to buy a house, common in the 1980s, is gaining in popularity again.

But lenders insist that high-risk lending is under control. "These loans are the exception rather than the rule," the Woolwich said.