Mortgage applicants have expressed their frustration over the intrusive new questioning regime introduced by the Mortgage Market Review – but most also agree that the reform is positive.

Conveyancing firm myhomemove conducted research with 100 applicants, half of whom had applied before MMR and half of whom applied after its introduction six months ago.

Applicants were asked if they found the process of applying for a mortgage “easy” or “difficult”. The number of people who said “easy” post-MMR fell by 16%.

Surprisingly, however, first-time buyers found it easier, with their first application more likely to succeed than before MMR.

While frustration levels shot up, 80% of both sets of applicants said that stricter lending criteria was a good thing for both the economy generally and the housing market.

Doug Crawford, CEO of myhomemove, said: “While we appreciate that answering reams of questions can feel personal and intrusive, it does seem to suggest that the new MMR process is robust and productive for many home movers, as the number of repeat applications fell substantially and successful first-time applications soared.

“However, as a conveyancing provider, we believe that lenders will become quicker at processing mortgage applications as regulatory requirements bed in, as unfortunately it is still one area of the home buying process which causes transactional delays and has suffered since the introduction of MMR.”