Nationwide changes rates

Posted on October 2, 2007
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IFAonline.co.uk is reporting changes to Nationwide’s range of mortgages:

Three-year, five-year deals will be priced at 5.85%, with fees of £499 and £599 respectively, and the ten-year fixed product is now 5.78% with a £499 fee. Two-year tracker deals will be priced between 5.48% and 6.08%.

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Credit crunch hits Northern Rock

Posted on September 15, 2007
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In extraordinary scenes, large amoutns of customers are queuing up outside of Northern Rock branches looking to withdraw their savings. With Northern Rock relying heavily on borrowing on international money markets to fund their mortgage lending, the current creidt crunch has hit them particulary hard. The intervention of the Bank of England earlier in the week with an emergency loan to ensure that the company can continue mortgage lending has spooked many customers. BBC news is reporting that up to £1bn was withdrawn on Friday alone.

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UK mortgage lender folds

Posted on September 10, 2007
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The fallout from the global ‘credit crunch’ continues; UK sub-prime mortgage lender Victoria Mortgages has gone into administration. While by no means a big player in the UK mortgage market, the company did sell ‘£500m worth of mortgages last year, accounting for about 3% of the overall sub-prime market.’

BBC news reports that ‘borrowers whose mortgage applications have been approved, but have yet to receive funds, are set to be worst hit. But rival lender GMAC-RFC is to step in to give finance to some borrowers affected by Victoria’s collapse.’

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Nationwide reporting house price slowed in August

Posted on August 30, 2007
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UK building society Nationwide reports that house price rose by just 0.6% this month (compared to an annual rate of around 9.6% for the year).

The Guardian notes that August’s rise “was slightly higher than the 0.5% the City had been expecting and represented a bounce back from the 0.1% increase registered in July, but the Nationwide said the five increases in bank rate over the past 13 months were being felt.”

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HIP’s being ignored by lenders?

Posted on August 23, 2007
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The Home Information Pack fiasco continues, with the speculation earlier in the week that UK mortgage lender HSBC is requiring house buyers to pay local authority checks as before, despite thesese checks being an integral part of HIP’s.

However a report on BBC news carried a statement from an HSBC spokesman clarifying the situation, stating that while they were supportive of HIP’s, they “have never accepted private searches rather than those from a solicitor. We just need to be sure that the customer’s solicitor will sign off the search so that it is covered by their personal indemnity insurance.”

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UK mortgage lenders deny sub prime problems

Posted on August 14, 2007
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IFAonline.co.uk reports that UK mortgage lenders including Kensington Mortgages and BM Solutions are citing ’structural differences’ between the US and UK housing markets as an indication that the American ’sub prime’ crisis will not find a mirror over the atlantic.

The article cites Ben Hammond from Kensington:

“The UK market is fundamentally different from the US in several ways,” he says.

“I think the main thing is that the FSA has done an excellent job in installing a sense of responsible lending and treating customers fairly within the mortgage market.”

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