Tuesday night was spent in the company of the great and the good of the mortgage industry at an awards do, and I must say it was really great to catch up with many a mortgage legend, or leg end by the end of the evening!
The overriding feeling was that most had had an optimistic and relatively successful June, but we have seen this before. A terrific month late last year was followed by the cliff fall that was the collapse of Lehman’s’ which is now seen as a massive faux pas by those who allowed this to happen.
It was refreshing to see a few days ago that there is to be another enquiry into the mortgage industry and why lenders are not lending more – refreshing in a dry glass of hot sawdust type of way!
They are going to investigate in-particular, “the sharp rise in repossessions and the chronic shortage of affordable home loans for first-time buyers”.
Brilliant. Is that really the best that the Government can come up with? A cross-party committee of MP’s wagging fingers at bankers and telling everyone what they are doing wrong whilst they try to keep their latest expenses form under wraps!
Sometimes, when sitting down to write these blogs, there is a news item which you feel makes much of what you planned to write seem pretty insignificant. The news that is filtering through from social media sites such as Twitter from Iran puts much into perspective.
Whilst we all battle with the mundane tasks of trying to earn a decent living, others are battling for basic human rights.
There are many reasons why I love working in Broadgate right in the heart of the city, apart from being on the doorstep of the major banks and many of our clients. One of them is undoubtedly the arena in the middle which stages various events, such as yesterday lunchtime watching the Lions game on a big screen with my colleague, and general rugby legend, Rob Henderson, who played in these games not so long ago.
Rob Henderson
All the talk at the moment in our industry is round the fact that most lenders are increasing their fixed rates, some dramatically, in a way that suggests we may well have seen the last of the incredibly competitive fixed rates for a long while.
This is something that many commentators as well as myself have been warning against for some time, but I think it is the scale of the changes that has surprised even those of us who expected it. Some lenders are increasing their fixes by around as much as 0.9%, which is a massive blow for many who are coming off low tracker rate products.
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.
