2021 has been a year of change and improvement for Acclaimed Mortgage Consultancy while seeing some personal challenges for me.
It’s been a rollercoaster of a year in the mortgage market. The early part of the year was incredibly busy as the property market was fuelled by the Stamp Duty holiday which ended in March. Despite the third national lockdown, the property market remained buoyant and low interest rates meant fairly accessible mortgage products – which all helped keep us very busy.
First-time buyers can look back positively on 2021 as we also noticed changes to the deals offered by mortgage lenders: particularly pleasing was the better loan to value deals for people taking the first steps on the property market.
Homeowners have also had a decent year as average house values continued to rise.
It was against this backdrop that our business saw some changes. We became a limited company and strengthened our team with the arrival of our new Mortgage and Protection Adviser, Gemma.
Our existing team also took steps forward in their careers with Alex’s hard work and expertise earning him a promotion to Compliance Manager while Amber successfully completed her apprenticeship to become a mortgage administrator. It’s great to develop our team and see them using their skills and knowledge to help our clients.
I’m passionate about the importance of life and critical illness insurance when advising our clients and always try to explain the benefits of having as much cover as you can afford. I know we all like to think ‘It’ll never happen to me’. This year it did happen to me. Thankfully, after a cancer diagnosis in June, I have now completed my treatment and am back to bossing the troops around at the office.
We’re not sending Christmas cards this year, but donating to Winston’s Wish instead. You can help maximise that donation by heading over to our Facebook page and sharing photos of your elves and their antics. We’ve also donated to The Dogs Trust recently and Alex and Amber had a very exciting time visiting the dogs.
We’ve been having fun in the office with our own Christmas “decorate a desk competition”. As you’d expect some of the younger team members have had great fun, here are some of our efforts.
Finally, we hope that you and your friends and family have a lovely Christmas and New Year. Our office will be closed from 5pm on Thursday 23rd December until 9am on Tuesday 4th January so please get in touch asap if you have any last minute financial questions. Otherwise we look forward to helping make your property dreams come true in 2022.