We've always thought that getting a secured loan was a lot easier than getting an unsecured one. The fact that secured loans use your property as a guarantee against the borrowing that you make makes them a better bet for lenders. So, historically these loans have been relatively easy to get and quick to arrange. They've also been available when we want to borrow larger sums of money.

During the prosperous years we've just gone through before we moved into recession taking out this kind of loan became really common. Some banks became simply so keen to lend money that they kind of relaxed their regulations during the approval process. So, it was a lot easier to get a secured loan a couple of years ago than it might be now.

Nowadays lenders need to be simply more careful about the money that they lend and the people that they lend it to. Consumers are defaulting on their loans and mortgages in increasing numbers so lenders may now work harder to check on your suitability to take out a secured loan than they did just a year ago.

There are a variety of factors that can make the difference between getting an application approved and rejected. These include:

1. Your income (i.e. the money you have coming in)
2. Your spending (i.e. the money you spend)
3. Your disposable income (i.e. your income left over when you take 2 away from 1!)
4. Your job (i.e. who you work for, how long you've worked there, whether you work full or part-time and what your job entails)
5. Your credit history (i.e. how well you have managed your finances in the past and whether you have had any problems)
6. How much equity you have built up in your home property

These points are listed here in no particular order. Some lenders will rank them according to their own specifications whilst others will treat them all as being of equal importance. The key factors here in terms of loan approval are your disposable income (used to check that you can afford your repayments) and your credit history (used to check you can manage your money OK).

But the main consideration when it comes to borrowing the money you need is not just about those two factors. It all really also depends on how much equity you've managed to build up in your home so far. Your equity is basically the profit margin that you have created by making mortgage repayments and rises in property value between your house value and your mortgage. So, as an example, if your house is worth £200,000 and your mortgage is £130,000 then you have £70,000 equity in it.

This figure is important to lenders when they look to approve loans. They may not, for example, want to let you borrow more from them than the equity amount that you have. If you default on your loan and your home is repossessed to pay them back then they want all their money back. So, this is a consideration to make when you are thinking about how much you can borrow.

It is worth remembering that even secured loans -- low risk as they may be to lenders --may not be given out in such large amounts nowadays. House prices have fallen a lot which has affected the equity that people have in their properties. Other issues may also affect your ability to borrow here. If you have already remortgaged your home, for example, then you may have used up some of this equity already.