By Neil Lewis, CEO, Property Secrets

In the next 2 months I believe we'll see two things happen .

1. Sub-prime home owners and sub-prime Buy-to-Let investors (typically those who ask for 'nothing down' investments), will see their mortgage rates rise in the UK.
2. Quality investors - i.e. those with a good credit history - and a job - or provable income - will continue to get good credit and not see much change.

In the next 6 months, we'll see two further developments.

1. Central bank base rates will come down slowly - we will be spared further increases. This will - over time - make loans cheaper for those with a good credit history. Also, interbank interest rates will stabilise.
2. Banks will then fall into two camps - those that win and those that lose from the current crunch. The losers will put up their mortgage rates - the winners will not. And therefore mortgage share will shift from the losers to the winners - and some weak lenders will go out of business.

This means shopping around for rates will become more important.

The winning banks will be those who have retail branches and lots of deposits (or the ability to raise them), and those that have avoided the re-packaged junk mortgage investments, which were dressed up as AAA securities.