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Buying your first property and investing in a mortgage can be a pretty scary experience. Thankfully, there are now many resources available online to help take you through the process and explain what you need to know and be on the look out for.

www.moneymadeclear.fsa.gov.uk
The FSA's mortgage site is helpful largely because it is impartial - unlike individual mortgage broker sites, the FSA aim to provide you with general information about mortgages rather than encouraging you to pick one in particular. Available on this site are handy things like the Mortgage Calculator, which gives you an idea of what your monthly repayments would be and how they might be affected by a change in interest rates, and the Jargon Buster - a whole glossary of tricky mortgage terms that it may be taken for granted that you know. Helpfully, the FSA also provide a Budget Calculator to help you work out how much money you have available each month so you can check how financially ready for a mortgage you are. Ultimately, this is a great site to check for a good grounding in the basics of mortgages if you're new to the market.

www.uswitch.com
Any comparison sites like uswitch.com can be very helpful when it comes to comparing rates and offers from different lenders. This can be good for contrasting various mortgage lenders, or for choosing a good savings account to invest money for your deposit in (a wise decision when made in advance of buying your property, as the deposit can put a bit of a dent in your finances). Sites like this will give you the basic details such as the AER, forms of access, minimum balance etc., and display them in easy to use tables for your benefit. For example, on a search for savings accounts with a balance of £5,000, the tables note that the AER on the Alliance & Leicester eSaver is 6.50%, and 6.30% at Egg Banking. It's best to remember, however, that these sites should only be a springboard for research - don't rely on their results entirely, as they may not include some companies that are worth looking into.

www.mortgages.co.uk
This is a handy site for advice for first time buyers - it's full of guides and hints to help you understand the finer points of the mortgage market. There are articles on the ins and outs of interest rates together with a breakdown of the extra fees and costs that you may encounter, and guides to the different types of available mortgage. Again, this is a great site for gathering some background information to start you off in your research, and can be very helpful in preparing you for the more complicated aspects of the process.

Rates and products quoted are correct at the time of writing (20.06.08) and may be changed at the discretion of the provider.