Your Mortgage

Moving house comes third only to death and divorce in the league table of life's most stressful experiences, so anything that makes it less fraught is to be welcomed. Your Mortgage magazine's website is an exemplary exercise in clarity, providing current, accessible information which you don't need a degree in finance to understand. Use the menu along the top and left-hand side of the homepage to move around. Links to other areas of the site remain visible whatever page you're on, so it's a breeze to navigate.

SPECIAL FEATURES

Find a Mortgage First-time buyers should start with The Mortgage Process, a lucid introduction to the whole, tension-filled process. If you already know what type of mortgage you're after, click on Search the Latest Mortgages for up-to-date information. If you find it all simply too confusing, and the idea of wading through hundreds of different mortgages is about as appealing as an estate agents' convention, go directly to Mortgage Wizard which gives a succinct survey of current mortgage offers.

House Prices Find out how much your house, or the one you are thinking of buying, will be worth in five years' time. Feed in the postcode and the value of the house, and results appear in an easy-to-understand graph. When we tried it out, the graph gave exactly the same value as a local surveyor had given us a month earlier, so we can vouch for its accuracy.

Buying & Selling Your Home The Step-by-Step guide is very easy to follow, if a little simplistic. For more comprehensive information, click on Buying or Selling.

Extra Costs details the things we often forget about in our rush to buy the perfect curtains for a new home. It provides a good indication of just how much conveyancing, contents insurance, and stamp duty are likely to cost. There are also links to property and lender websites.

Checklists includes lots of PDF lists and a link to download Acrobat Reader in order to print them out. Viewing Checklist will help you remember what you've seen in the dizzying rush to find the perfect house. The Contents and Costs Checklists are good too.

News & Editorial Each month there are new features on the latest lending and borrowing trends. At the time of writing, these covered a broad range of subjects, from buying homes online, to the pros and cons of buy-to-let mortgages.

OTHER FEATURES

The section on Life Assurance includes a free service, in conjunction with Direct Life & Pensions, to provide you with a quotation after searching a panel of leading insurers. The Jargon Monitor at the top of the page provides a blissfully clear glossary for those lost in the financial maze of home buying.