One of the biggest changes in the Mortgage Market occurred a few days ago when the massive Lloyds Banking Group announced that they will no longer provide loans on an interest only basis above £500,000.
Given that it is the very customer base who most want to use interest only this is quite a big deal.
They have also gone further with loans below £500,000 in that applicants can no longer just say they will pay the loan off via the sale of the property, their buy-to-let portfolio or general bonus payments, but must have either a pension or some kind of savings plan. Is the return of the Endowment nigh?
In January, mortgage borrowing and housing transactions generally fell off a cliff given the sub-zero weather conditions and the end of the stamp duty holiday in December, so February’s slight uptick isn’t too much of a surprise.
Looking forward, we’re not expecting borrowing levels to accelerate significantly in the run-up to the General Election, and they may even fall back slightly post-Election.
Come the second half of the year we’ll know far more about how the mortgage and residential property markets are likely to fare in the short term.
With apologies to The Blow Monkeys for lifting the title of their debut album, (I love a music link), for some reason this phrase popped into my head when the latest quarterly GDP figures were released showing that we have just about limped out of recession.
The political soothsayers have been having a field day showing how we were the first into recession and the last out, and that the road ahead is going to be a frankly tortuous affair. Even Alistair Darling could not rule out the possibility of a dip back into the negative almost on the eve of the election.
The problem with email is the bland way that it conveys your messages without actually conveying the smirk on your face as you write it, the cheeky little twinkle in your eye or the sarcasm you would have said it with. As a result, alot can be misread and some can take offence when nothing could have been further from the truth.
I guess that is why in much online writing and message boards many use the kind of annotation symbols I used to find rather annoying but have now embraced with glee, you know the ones; lol, 
:-0)* (no idea on the last one, but you get the idea).
I was up before the crack of dawn yesterday morning, 4.15 am to be precise, for a stint on BBC Radio 5 Live’s’ “Wake Up To Money” followed by BBC Breakfast TV chatting about mortgage rates after one too many cups of strong coffee. We were talking about the different predictions around Bank Base Rate and what the hell the general public make of it all when it comes to making their own decisions with regards to their own mortgage.
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.
