January has never been a particularly strong month for mortgage data and this year the drop has been exacerbated by the stamp duty holiday that ended in December and last month’s dire weather.
However, activity picked up towards the end of January and into February so we expect to see stronger figures from February on until they begin to tail off again in the second half of the year.
January’s figures shouldn’t dampen the spirits as the mortgage market has got off to a flyer compared to this time last year, with hundreds of new products hitting the market and enquiry levels rising dramatically.
Apparently, according to some sources, remortgaging is now back in vogue and enjoying somewhat of a renaissance as it is officially now the case that remortgage products are cheaper than most lenders Standard Variable Rates.
Some of us have already been talking about this since the start of the year, and it is nice to be backed up by some weighty reports. Moneysupermarket.com, for example, have stated that even when taking the new mortgage product arrangement fees into account the “best” fixed rate and the “best” tracker product over 2 years will beat the majority of lenders SVR’s.
Let’s be honest, I am sure no-one expected to see that the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee, (MPC), had suddenly raised rates from their current 0.5% level, although some commentators have been a little jittery with inflation nudging 3%.
What is more interesting is that not only have the MPC decided to take a pause in their campaign of Quantitative Easing, £200 billion seems to have been enough of a spending spree for now at least, but you could argue that Bank Base has now entered a new phase – I call it “the expectation phase”. This is where many people expect a change but are not quite sure when and it is this expectation that can be a driver for all manner of decisions.
Andrew Montlake, Communications Director at Coreco and ‘Mortgage Personality of the Year 2008’, gives his views — honest and no holds barred — on the latest developments within the mortgage and property markets.
