Patrick Weightman Mortgages & Protection

Patrick Weightman Mortgages & Protection Think your family should be too? Let's talk about life insurance, critical illness cover, and income protection.

🏡 Mortgage & Protection Adviser with TMG Direct
📍 Hinckley & Leicestershire

Helping first-time buyers & self-employed clients save money, protect what matters & explore greener mortgage options 🌱

🏆 2026 TMG Mortgage Network Rising Star Finalist TMG Direct Mortgage & Protection Broker | Hinckley, Leicestershire

Helping first-time buyers, home movers, and self-employed clients across Leicestershi

re secure the right mortgage and protection. Based in Earl Shilton near Hinckley, serving Warwickshire, Northants, Derby, Nottinghamshire, Rugby, Nuneaton, Lutterworth, Broughton Astley, and Market Harborough.

✅ First-Time Buyer Mortgages
✅ Self-Employed & Small Business Owner Mortgages
✅ Buy-to-Let & Landlord Finance
✅ Remortgage Services
✅ Mortgage Capacity Reports
✅ Bridging Loans & Equity Release
✅ Life Insurance & Protection Cover
✅ Eco Home Improvement Financing (Heat Pumps & Green Upgrades)

Access to a whole of market panel of lenders including Nationwide, Accord, Barclays, Halifax, HSBC, NatWest, and specialist providers. Free initial consultation, fees only apply when your mortgage application succeeds.

📞 01455 241201
📱 07579 048670
✉️ [email protected]

Your mortgage is protected.

09/09/2026

Most people think life insurance only pays out one big lump sum. There's another version that pays your family a monthly income instead, and it's often cheaper than the cover you assume you need.

It's called Family Income Benefit. Instead of leaving a lump sum your family then has to make last, it pays a set amount every month for the rest of the policy term if the worst happens.

Think about what that actually replaces. Not a pile of money, but the wage: the bit that pays the mortgage, fills the fridge and keeps the lights on. Family Income Benefit just keeps that turning up.

And it can cost less. The further into the term you go, the fewer monthly payments would be left, so the insurer's risk drops over time, which often means a lower premium than the equivalent lump sum.

It isn't right for everyone, and plenty of families want a mix of both. If your income stopped tomorrow, would your family need a lump sum, or the monthly wage to keep coming in?

Information is for guidance only and does not constitute financial advice. Insurance cover is subject to eligibility, underwriting and insurer criteria, and policies carry exclusions and limitations.

09/09/2026

Outgrown your home? The question isn't always 'move or stay'. Quite often it's move or improve.

A loft, an extension, a knock-through... staying put and building can work out cheaper than you'd expect once you add up the real cost of moving: stamp duty, agent fees, legal costs, removals. It all adds up fast.

But borrowing more to improve has to stack up and be affordable too. Sometimes moving genuinely is the answer. Sometimes raising a bit extra on a remortgage to build is.

The trick is deciding on real numbers rather than a gut feel. I can pull the figures both ways so you can see it in black and white.

Your home may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgage.

08/09/2026

When you took your mortgage out, did anyone actually explain what choosing a 25-year term over a 35-year one does to the total cost? Or did a number just appear?

Here's the trade-off nobody spells out. A longer term means a lower monthly payment, which can be a real help. But you're paying interest for more years, so the total you hand over by the end can be a good deal bigger. A shorter term costs more each month and far less overall.

Neither is right or wrong. A longer term can be exactly right for a first-time buyer who needs the monthly to be affordable, and you can often overpay or shorten it later. A shorter one suits someone who wants to be mortgage-free sooner. The mistake is letting the term get picked for you to make a sum work, without anyone showing you the long-term cost.

This is one of the genuinely useful bits of my job: I can run it both ways, side by side, so you decide on real numbers, not a guess.

Do you even know what term you're on right now, and whether it still suits your life today?

Your home may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgage.

Rates are creeping back up this week. Not crashing, not spiking, just firming, and a few deals quietly getting pulled.He...
08/09/2026

Rates are creeping back up this week. Not crashing, not spiking, just firming, and a few deals quietly getting pulled.

Here's the calm version. If your current deal ends in the next six months or so, this is a good week to get it looked at. You can usually line up a new rate around six months early, and if the market eases before you complete, we can often ask your lender to switch you to the lower one. So looking early usually costs you nothing and gives you options if rates keep nudging up.

No need to panic. Just don't leave it to the last fortnight and take whatever's left on the shelf.

Is your deal up within the next six months?

Your home may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgage.

08/09/2026

'How much can I actually borrow?' It's the first question nearly everyone asks me, and the honest answer is: it depends. But there's a rough starting point.

Most lenders begin somewhere around 4.5 times your income, then adjust up or down for your outgoings, credit, deposit and how your income is made up. Some stretch further for the right circumstances; plenty won't.

So that number in the online calculator? A guess. Your real figure comes from matching you to the lender that actually fits you.

It's Know Your Numbers Week, a good excuse to swap the guess for the genuine article.

Your home may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgage.

07/09/2026

Buying a house with someone, and one of you is putting in more than the other? Worth reading before you complete.

Here's what catches people out. Whose name is on the mortgage, and who actually owns what share of the home, are two different things. If you're not married and you split up, or one of you dies, an unequal deposit can quietly get treated as a straight fifty-fifty that nobody ever agreed to.

A Deed of Trust (sometimes called a Declaration of Trust) is a simple legal document that records who put in what, and who gets what back if the place is ever sold. Ideal for different deposits, a parent's gift they'd like protected, or friends and siblings buying together.

Your solicitor draws it up, not me. But I arrange the solicitor and make sure the mortgage and the ownership side line up, so nothing slips through the cracks. Sort it at the start, while everyone's still smiling, and it's cheap and easy.

Buying with someone and putting in different amounts? Is your share actually protected on paper, or are you just hoping it'll be fine?

Your home may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgage.

07/09/2026

"House prices are falling" is the headline everywhere this morning. Before anyone panics, let me put it in perspective.

The Lloyds House Price Index for August landed at seven o'clock today: prices down 0.4% over the year. It is the first annual fall in nearly three years, so the headline writers are having a lovely time with their minus sign.

But here's that fall in real money. On a home worth about £298,468, a 0.4% drop is roughly £1,200 spread across a whole year. That's a rounding error, not a crash. It's less than a lot of people knock off haggling over a used car.

And the bigger picture is calmer still. Prices have basically been walking on the spot for the best part of two years now, a touch up one month and a touch down the next. August simply happened to land on down.

Here's the bit worth hearing. That plus or minus sign is almost never the thing that decides whether you can buy, move or remortgage. Your own numbers are, your rate and your timing, and that's the bit I can actually help with. I can log into most lenders' systems and pull the real numbers for your situation, so you're deciding on facts rather than a headline written to make you flinch.

Did today's news give you a wobble? Let me know below and I'll happily talk it through.

Your home may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgage.

What actually counts as income when you apply for a mortgage? Spoiler: it's more than your basic pay.It's National Payro...
07/09/2026

What actually counts as income when you apply for a mortgage? Spoiler: it's more than your basic pay.

It's National Payroll Week, so here's the number everything hinges on. Lenders look at your income in more detail than most people expect, and it makes a real difference to how much you can borrow.

The carousel walks through it: basic salary, then overtime, bonus and commission (often counted at a percentage), then self-employed and other income. Two people on the same 'salary' can be offered very different amounts. It's all in the detail.

If your income isn't just a flat number, that's exactly where good advice pays for itself.

Your home may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgage.

06/09/2026

The story you've been told all summer, that mortgage rates are quietly drifting down, actually flipped this week. And most people won't have clocked it yet.

Let me explain, because it's the useful bit. Your fixed rate isn't really priced off the Bank of England. It follows the swap markets, the money markets lenders buy their funding from, ticking away in the background. And this week those jumped, to levels we've not seen in years, with government borrowing costs hitting their highest in decades. When a lender's own cost of money goes up like that, the first thing to happen is the cheapest deals get pulled. It's already started: Virgin Money nudged some of their fixes up this week, the first of the big names to break ranks after weeks of everyone cutting, and the people who watch this closely reckon others could follow within days.

Now, before anyone panics, here's the balance. The base rate hasn't moved. The headline average rates haven't jumped yet. And the sharpest deals, for people with a decent chunk of equity, were still sat on the shelf this morning. It takes a while for the markets to feed through to the rate you're actually offered, so treat this as a warning light on the dashboard, not the engine falling out. No need to do anything daft, just don't dawdle if your timing's tight.

Away from rates it was a calmer week. The latest house price figures had prices up very gently over the year, nothing dramatic, and the quiet good news underneath is that prices are now rising slower than wages, so bit by bit, buying is getting a little more within reach. Round our patch a first home still starts a good way below the national average. And there was proper good news for a couple of groups this week: The Mortgage Works loosened its rules for landlords, and a new zero-deposit mortgage launched on selected new-builds for buyers who are stuck on the deposit rather than the monthly payments.

So what do you do with all that? First-time buyer, the sums round here work better than the national headlines suggest, and the door's opening a little wider than it was. Moving, you've got choice and a bit of room to haggle, so take your time but stay switched on. Landlord, buy-to-let rules just eased this week, so it's worth running your numbers. And if you're coming up to a remortgage in the next six months, this one's for you. Get a deal lined up now: I can log into most lenders and hold one for you, and you can still swap down if the market softens, but you can't grab a rate that's already gone. Do nothing and you drift onto the lender's standard variable rate, which is the most expensive seat in the house. Book it now, review it later.

I'll be back next Sunday with another Week in Review, give the page a follow so you don't miss it.

Figures correct as at 6 September 2026, verify before acting.

Information is for guidance only and does not constitute financial advice. Mortgage and protection products are subject to eligibility, underwriting and lender/insurer criteria. Your home may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgage. Most buy-to-let mortgages are not regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.

For about three years the mortgage story only went one way. Down. Last week, it turned.If your fixed rate ends in the ne...
06/09/2026

For about three years the mortgage story only went one way. Down. Last week, it turned.

If your fixed rate ends in the next six months, you have not missed the boat. There is a quiet bit of the system that lets you line up your next deal now, months before the current one ends. Reserve today's rate, and if a cheaper one comes along before you complete you can usually switch to it. If rates rise, you keep the one you grabbed.

Whose fixed deal ends before next spring? Pop the month it runs out in the comments and I will tell you when you should be getting the ball rolling.

Think carefully before securing debt against your home. Information is for guidance only and does not constitute financial advice. Mortgage and protection products are subject to eligibility, underwriting and lender/insurer criteria. Your home may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgage.

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114 Keats Lane, Earl Shilton
Hinckley
LE97DR

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