The trend in Mortgage lending is very much encouraging as the latest figures indicate a sharp rise of 23% in June. This is really a booster to the recession hit housing and property sector. Read the rest of this entry »

Alistair Darling has catapulted a fresh attack on the bank bonuses- and revealed that he was ready to bring new laws to harness them. The Chancellor’s recent warning, just another among the several warnings given by government over the past twelve months, came in the wake of the announcement that Barclays made. The announcement was that it was awarding £30million reward pay just to five of their staff. Read the rest of this entry »

These days, finding a secured lender is becoming more and more difficult. A future mortgage owned by Citi group was the first one to hit the dust right at the beginning of the credit crunch. This lender lacked strict lending policies and gladly accepted self-declarations of not only self-employed applicants but also from employed applicants, that too, with no backup proof. All that a self-employed person had to prove to them was that he was genuinely self-employed. Many such future mortgagors and similar companies fell to ground. Eversince, we have been experiencing low interest rates and Mortgage Rates. The Bank of England’s lending rate dropped to as low as 0.05% and hence was responsible for the low rates. However, Halifax Building Society has announced and increase in the tracker mortgage rate to 3.5%, whose recent rate on Friday was 2.99%. Read the rest of this entry »

Newcastle, the UK’s 10th biggest building society, is at an advanced stage of takeover talks with rival Skipton and if the project is through it would form a £21 billion mutual with over 1.1 million people. Skipton and Newcastle would be then be a strong financial force to reckon with. Only Britannia and Nationwide after being taken into the Co-op would be larger in terms of assets. Read the rest of this entry »

The UK property market is showing a confusing picture with Mortgage approvals being up in May but net mortgage lendings down by more than 30%. The Bank of England confirms that this is the more or less general trend of the UK market with each report revealing both positive and negative aspects of the property market. This has left several homeowners and investors confused as they are failing to understand the real trend of the market. However, this trend will become evident in the coming months. Read the rest of this entry »