said interest-only mortgages would be available only to those who earned a minimum of 50,000 gross basic salary per annum, and that loans would be considered only on an individual basis. Coventry Building Society said it would raise its minimum equity requirement to 50pc. Santander and Nationwide have also changed the criteria for their interest-only deals in the past few months. These changes, which come after the Financial Services Authority recommended revisiting the rules on interest-only mortgages, are being exacerbated by changing rules on lending to older people. "It is much more difficult than it used to be to get a mortgage into retirement," Mr Boulger said. "We're in this bizarre situation where more and more people are working longer, but they can't get a mortgage." The problem has been created partly by the endowment mortgage frenzy in the late Eighties. Home buyers were encouraged to take out interest-only home loans backed by with-profits investment policies. These were meant to pay off the mortgage and provide an extra lump sum if investment returns were good. However, most have not delivered on this promise, and many home buyers will be left with a shortfall between what their policies will pay out and what they owe on their mortgage. Experts fear that those coming to the end of their mortgage deals may become "mortgage prisoners", unable to get a mortgage elsewhere and trapped on whatever deal the lender will offer them. In extreme cases, mortgage companies can apply what is called a