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John's Blog -
Latest
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Written by Administrator
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Wednesday, 08 April 2009 11:21 |
 If anyone read last week’s newsletter (and I’d be slightly hurt if it wasn’t read by all) then one of the first things I quoted was the Nationwide Price Index average house price rise of 0.9%. It didn’t take long (a few hours actually) for Halifax to release their figures which showed a decline of 1.9%. Confused? Well you should be – trying to guess the bottom of the market is an impossible task; however it is useful to see what is happening on the wider scale. For what its worth, my prediction is (still) Quarter 3 will see the market flattening before it starts to pick up, albeit slowly, in 2010. There’s one group of people, however, who are quite literally trapped living in their homes at the moment no matter what happens to house prices. These are the many people who took out self-certification mortgages and would need a new self-cert mortgage to move. No self-cert = no move. |
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Read more... [The self-cert trap]
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John's Blog -
Latest
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Written by Administrator
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Thursday, 02 April 2009 11:58 |
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 Shock horror!
There’s been two bits of good news all in one week. The Nationwide Price Index reported an average house price rise of 0.9% AND mortgage approvals rose to their highest since May 2008. Maybe it's because the sun is out and people have come out of hibernation – whatever the reason, there is definitely a feeling that most of the bad news has gone and that we are starting to ‘bottom out’ (I’m touching wood as we speak). Because mortgage approvals happen ahead of property transactions, these figures |
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Read more... [The end of the beginning?]
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John's Blog -
Newswire
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Written by John S
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Friday, 20 March 2009 11:48 |
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 The FSA have just published the Turner review (which includes a mortgage market review) – in relation to the mortgage market they are looking into loan to value and income multiples – in fact they are assessing if there is a relationship between customer defaults/bank losses and high initial LTV/loan to income.
The report is due out September 2009 - and it will consider capping loan to value ratios and income multiples. So what should we make of this? Well the tabloid press had a field day as usual with their tales of doom and gloom but the intermediary association AMI actually welcomed the report in that no formal loan to values/loan income ratios would be rushed into. As usual it’s a matter of wait and see – even though this would have the desired effect of curbing excessive lending we won’t have had much excess anyway by September! |
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Read more... [Mortgage market set for review]
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John's Blog -
Newswire
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Written by John S
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Wednesday, 25 March 2009 12:09 |
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 For those that follow the buy to let mortgage market closely, there has been a small bit of good news over the last few days (and I mean small). Far be it from me to use the term ‘green shoots’ (more like - less manure), but first we saw BM Solutions add some more 75% products to the market, and Bank of Scotland actually re-entered the 75% market with a new 5 year fixed rate. This is the first positive step from a lender in months.
I’ve also heard (on the shrivelled grapevine) that the asset protection scheme has already started to help free the flow of lending, and one of our well known lenders is doubling their daily lending limit from April. What does this mean? Could be less stringent credit scoring. Could be better rates. |
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Read more... [Light at the end of the tunnel - albeit a distant tunnel!]
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John's Blog -
Newswire
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Written by John S
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Wednesday, 11 March 2009 11:21 |
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The big news in our industry this week is that two of the biggest mortgage brokerages in the UK are going out of business. Chase de Vere and Cobalt Capital both went into administration this week due to market conditions - so if any of you were clients of these companies (and not using Resident Broker – for shame) then we will welcome you with open arms. We may not have offices in Kensington but we are still going strong - our feeling is that in these times correct advice is more important than ever. And the feedback from you is that you seem to agree. |
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Read more... [Survival of the fittest]
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