Two mortgage lenders have taken steps to try and encourage more people onto the housing ladder.

The Bradford-based Yorkshire Building Society, has seen a surge in demand for first-time buyer loans.

Since its June revamp, the number of people with smaller deposits helped onto the property ladder has doubled month on month.

Yorkshire has now cut its interest rate on its two-year fixed rate first time buyer mortgage to 5.59 per cent.

And Skipton Building Society has launched a range of two and five year fixed rate loans to try and boost mortgage business..

Chris Smith, YBS senior product manager, said: “We’re aware of the difficulties first time buyers face getting onto the property ladder. As a national building society, our aim is to help people to own a home.”

Skipton has launched a two-year fix at 2.99 per cent for it 65 per cent loan to value mortgage and a 3.19 per cent fixed rate for 70 per cent ‘loan to value’ (LTV).

It also offers five-year fixed rate at 4.78 per cent up to 80 per cent LTV.

Kris Brewster, head of products. said: “We believe these new mortgages will increase consumers’ ability to find not just a rate, but also product terms that are suitable for them.”

The latest moves come as rising numbers of homeowners are complaining about their lender after discovering they owe more on their mortgage than they had previously thought.

The Financial Ombudsman Service said its helpdesk had seen an increase in calls about mortgage under funding after lenders had miscalculated customers’ repayments. The issue came to the fore last month when it emerged that 18,000 customers at Yorkshire and Clydesdale Bank had been underpaying their mortgages due to an error by the group.

But the FOS warned that unless the lender could be shown to be “entirely to blame” for the situation, consumers were unlikely to qualify for compensation.