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Halifax  has unveiled  a new mortgage range which will come into affect on Monday including tracker rates cut by 0.3%.

It is also rumoured that the  UK’s largest mortgage lender will cut arrangement fees by up to£500.

Recently a three-year tracker with a maximum LTV of 75% was set at 6.64% with a £1,499 fee. It will now reduce to 6.34% with a £999 fee.A three-year tracker with a 75% to 90% LTV set at 6.99% with a £1,499 fee will lower  to 6.75% with a £999 fee.

Halifax says it will be alerting  brokers with the new mortgage  details before the end of the week. Read the rest of this entry »

Nationwide Building Society figures showed that  house prices fell again this month and are down around  £8,000 compared with the same time  last year.

Nationwide’s house price index for May showed that  prices fell by 2.5%, the largest monthly reduction since the index began in 1995.The average house price in the UK  is now £173,583 compared with £178,555 in April.

Fionnuala Earley, chief economist at Nationwide, says: “Problems in the credit markets have been the trigger for changing fortunes in the housing market. While it is never wise to place too much weight on one data point, the apparent speed of the adjustment may lead the Monetary Policy Committee to look more closely at the balance of inflation risks in the medium term.”

Nationwide said there’s scope to be optimistic because prices are 5% higher than they were two years ago.

They say borrowers are also better placed to withstand a housing market downturn than in previous years. Most did not buy at the height of the market, they are putting down larger deposits and are choosing capital rather than interest-only mortgages. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

The UK mortgage market still slow despite some little signs   recovery in April.

The British Bankers’ Association  show ed38,704 new mortgages were approved in the UK in April, up from 35,546 in March.

But this is still down nearly 40% compared with the same time last year.

The figures showed a rise in the amount of people remortgaging, highlighting the  trend othat homeowners switch lenders for a better deal every few years.

“It is clear that, contrary to some reports, the mainstream mortgage market has not ground to a halt,” said the BBA’s statistics director David Dooks.

The figures cover the main banks in the UK, who have been able to ride the credit crunch and have continued to offer a larger range of mortgage deals than smaller lenders could not offer.

The smaller banks and building societies have been putting deals on hold or withdrawn mortgage products as lending between financial institutions remains tight.

The rise in remortgaging levels - up from 60,410 in March to 74,722 in April - could also be the effect of Northern Rock customers being encouraged to switch lenders for more competitive deals.

The BBA said that approvals for remortgaging were “exceptionally strong” in April and would lead to the main High Street banks increasing their share of the mortgage market.

But the BBA also admitted that approvals for house purchases continued to be well down on 2007.

Mr Dooks said pressures on household finances, stalling house prices and tighter lending criteria were all cutting the demand of people wanting to move home.

Annual growth in credit card borrowing also fell slightly in April, with repayments (£7.7bn) outstripping new spending on plastic (£7.4bn).

The figures came on the day that a report by ratings agency Standard and Poor’s (S&P) suggested that more than a fifth of sub-prime borrowers in the UK had fallen behind with repayments.

The number of people with chequered credit histories who fell behind on repayments for more than 30 days rose from 19.4% in the final three months of 2007 to 21.7% in the first quarter of 2008.

Some 10.6% of sub-prime borrowers were 90 days or more behind on repayments, the report found. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

 A survey from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics) suggests that a turn down in residential property sales is having a positive affect on the UK Buy to Let market.

The survey of residential BTL’s says that a number of surveyors are reporting a rise in instructions for BTL  property valuations showing an increase of 29% in the quarter to April.

This is comparable with a survey for the 3 months before showing a fall of 2%.

A lack of demand to buy houses has forced sellers back into the rental market, where yields are rising, Rics says.

“The sales market’s loss is the lettings market’s gain,” said Rics spokesperson James Scott-Lee.

“Some would-be sellers are retreating from selling and letting or re-letting their properties as they wait for mortgage lenders to offer buyers more favourable lending criteria,” he added.

Rent Increases

Some people who are unable to get onto the property ladder or unwilling to buy while prices are falling are deciding to rent until the market improves, exacerbating yield rises.

Rics said 23% more UK surveyors reported a rise in gross yields, up from 5% in the previous quarter and gross yields are now increasing at their fastest pace since the survey began reporting them in April 1999.

This seems to be halting the recent retreat of landlords from the market.

Landlords who decided to sell their properties when tenant leases expires alaso fell from 4.6% in the previous quarter to 4.2%, the survey showed.

The problem in the UK residential housing market was primarily down to  the credit crunch and the problems in the banking system, which have caused severe damage to the balance sheets of many of the UK’s lenders.

The banks have then  been forced to increase credit repayments and pull many of their better mortgage deals, particularly for those without a reasonably large deposit. Read the rest of this entry »

The Bank of England voted 8-1 to keep mortgage interest rates on hold at 5%, minutes of its last meeting show.

There was only member of the bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) who favoured a cut which was David Blanchflower, who wanted a reduction to 4.75%.

Inflation has gone up in the last few months. This has been  driven by high oil and food prices, making the MPC reluctant to cut rates despite the cooling economy.

The MPC made clear an interest rate cut is unlikely “for a few months”.

Latest figures showed the Consumer Prices Index reached an annual rate of 3%, above the government’s own target of 2% which further reduced the chances of a rate cut.

March’s 0.8% rise in consumer prices was the highest for nearly seven years.

If inflation rises above 3% then the Bank of England Governor Mervyn King has to write a public letter to the  Chancellor Alistair Darling, to explain why and what has happened and what the bank is doing to lower inflation.

The MPC said that “with inflation set to move into letter-writing territory in the next month or two, the next cut looks unlikely to come for a few months unless the activity news is absolutely dreadful.”

“Given the sharp rise in inflation in April - figures that the Committee had at the time of their decision - it is not surprising that eight of the nine-strong MPC voted in favour of interest rates on hold two weeks ago,” said George Buckley, head economist at Deutsche Bank. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Two recent surveys have today given  some much needed  good news to the property market.

Rightmove’s house price survey claimed the average asking price for property is up by 1.2%. Of course there are still areas around the country where prices went down, with prices in the south tending to hide those of the rest of the UK.

The latest survey from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) predicts that prices may fall  by 5% in 2008. Whilst this may not sound like great news, it is a good deal better than the previous predictions of 30% drops.

HoweThe report also said it believed that property sales may fall by up to  40% during 2008, which is bad news for anyone hoping to sell this year. Read the rest of this entry »

Abbey has today reduced the rate on  its flexible mortgage and tracker mortgage. Some fixed-rate products also reduced for customers with large deposits.

Abbey states it is making reductions to flexible and tracker rate mortgages in anticipation of further LIBOR falls in the near future.

All Abbey flexible and tracker rate mortgages will be reduce by 0.05%, following a 0.1% shortly after the Bank of England’s latest base rate cut.

However, as the base rate was cut by 0.25%, the 0.15% total cut widens the gap between base rates and rates paid by borrowers.

Fixed rates for borrowers with large deposits of over 25% have been reduced by up to 0.17%, with Abbey’s five-year fixed rate priced at 5.75%. Read the rest of this entry »