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It will come as little surprise that the effects of the last 18 months are now resulting in rising demand for flexible underwriting for complex income residential cases; and this is true for both employed and self-employed borrowers.
The pandemic has been the driving force behind many people changing their employment status and how they earn – either through choice or necessity.
PeoplePerHour, a platform for freelance workers, reported its biggest rise in registrations for more than a decade. PeoplePerHour reveals that:
· Nearly one in five freelancers (19%) are now self-employed with a supplementary ‘side gig’ alongside an employee position.
· Almost two fifths of these (37%) said they started freelancing in the last 12 months, suggesting a spike in the number of 2nd jobbers during the pandemic.
· Nearly a quarter (24%) of those freelancers surveyed said they had gone into self-employment to add to their main income.
· Almost a quarter of a million (227,000) people applied to use the platform in 2020, up from 136,000 in 2019.
· Ninety-eight per cent of people with a 2nd income stream said they plan to continue freelancing in some form.
· Importantly, 13 per cent said they planned to take their side gig full-time, 22 per cent said they planned to work part-time as a freelancer and 33 per cent said they would continue freelancing alongside a full-time employee position.
People’s motivations for taking up freelancing were said to be overwhelmingly positive, with over half (55%) citing the desire for greater flexibility and over two-fifths (44%) saying they wanted to increase their income.
It’s evident that many people are becoming more and more reliant on a wider variety of ways to generate income. As a result of this, here at Foundation Home Loans, we have been working hard to develop and implement a significant number of product and criteria-related enhancements to better service the ongoing mortgage requirements of the self-employed community and enable borrowers with complex incomes to access the mortgages they need within responsible underwriting boundaries.
