Anyone out there who’s always wanted to set up a Web site and hotline and start lending out mortgages of your own? Anyone? If this happens to be your lifelong dream, you need to start doing it right now. While the yawning void remains open. You may need a great deal of cheap cash to get started (your problem) but we can guarantee you the business. And we have HSBC to prove it. Apparently, its operation has been swamped with so many applications, it had to temporarily shut down. Read on for the details of what happens when you suddenly become the only game in town.

First Direct, the online and telephone banking unit of HSBC Holdings Plc, suspended mortgage lending to new customers after applications rose fivefold.

The unit of Europe's biggest bank by market value received more applications after other lenders withdrew products and increased the cost of loans, said First Direct spokesman Rob Skinner today.

``It's a temporary withdrawal for a matter of weeks until we clear the backlog of applications,'' said Skinner. ``It is not about funding, but about customer service.''

The number of mortgage products in the U.K., including residential, landlord and subprime loans, has declined by 66 percent to 5,272 since July, according to Moneyfacts Group, the price comparison provider. Both mainstream and subprime lenders have withdrawn products, said spokeswoman Julia Harris.

Mortgage providers like Alliance & Leicester Group Plc and Nationwide Building Society, the U.K.'s biggest customer-owned home lender, have cut their mortgage range after financing costs rose.

HSBC bought Prospect Heights, Illinois-based Household International for $15.5 billion in 2003, which lent directly to customers with subprime status. It has since trimmed lending at the unit, closed operations and ousted management following an increase in delinquencies. Bad loans worldwide rose to $17.2 billion in 2007 from $10.6 billion a year earlier.

HSBC fell 0.4 percent to 857.5 pence at 10:03 a.m. in London trading, against a 1.7 percent rise in the Bloomberg European Banks Index.

Alternative Mortgage

First Direct, which has 1 million customers, said borrowers seeking its 4.95 percent two-year fixed rate offer can obtain a mortgage from HSBC, which offers a similar loan at 4.99 percent. First Direct's existing mortgage customers are unaffected.

``We are going to see more lenders looking for ways to restrict lending,'' said Ray Boulger, senior technical manager at mortgage broker John Charcol Ltd. ``First Direct has a market- leading product and they would have had to put the price up a long way to have an impact.''

Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and its NatWest unit became the first lenders this year to raise their variable mortgage rates for existing customers from today, the Financial Times reported earlier.

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