You can rely on football fans to eloquently say what everyone else is thinking, and as far as the tube strike is concerned last night was no exception. To most of us working hard and struggling on in the face of redundancies, cuts and pay freezes all over the place, this latest action is a smack in the face for all who live in London.
I know I am meant to write about mortgages and property, but looking round at people gamely walking, cycling and finding any means necessary to get into work shows London’s’ resilience, bombs did not stop us so tube strike pah, and why I love it so much.
As widely predicted, the Monetary Policy Committee has again voted to hold the Bank of England Base Rate at 0.5% today.
There has been growing talk that there are now definite signs of recovery, especially with the news this week of a growth in the service sector for the first time in a year, according to The Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply’s (CIPS) services survey.
Taken together with the Halifax reporting that house prices rose by 2.6% in May, the Bank of England stating that there was an 8% rise in the number of mortgages approved for house purchases, as well as the Nationwide Index of consumer confidence jumping further, there do seem to be some reasons to be cheerful.
It may have escaped some peoples notice, but 3 month LIBOR, (the rate at which banks lend to each other that was so out of kilter during the main thrust of the credit crunch), is now back to around 0.7% above Bank Base. This is the upper limit of “normality” we have seen in the past.
In this respect then, the credit crunch seems to be at an end. However, if we are back to some kind of normality why are lenders still finding excuses not to lend as much? Surely also rates should be lower now and lenders margins seem to be bigger than ever so they must be “coining it in”?
Thanks to Prince for the title of this piece, but finally our new website is up and running, subject to the usual teething problems of course. Now I guess the hard work really begins. The fact that I am free from all constraints, not that it actually stopped me writing what I thought anyway; means maybe I can be even more honest!
During the “down time” I have been getting to grips with the technology front even more and really understanding how great something like Twitter is. You can follow me at montysblog, short, sharp and to the point.
Billed as the make or break budget, the one which would define Brown & Darlings tenancy of Number 10 and 11, the question is did they deliver?
The backdrop to this quintessential speech is an economy where different polls, reports and stats look like they are saying different things. We all know about the bad news, but there have also been some tentative signs of improvement recently.
Only today we saw figures from the CML that showed a further bounce in mortgage lending, joining a growing consensus that the worst of the housing crisis may now be behind us. On the surface these latest figures appear to support this theory.
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.
