Latest Mortgage News

July 24, 2008

Tracker mortgages provide strong competition for fixed-rates

by Gill Montia
Moneysupermarket.com is alerting homeowners to the fact that the average two-year tracker mortgage is offering increasingly good value. The price comparison website's weekly credit crunch monitor shows that at the beginning of June, there was little difference between the cost of the average two-year fix and the average two-year tracker. However, the latest update puts the difference at over 0.5%, in ...

---

July 23, 2008

Which? exposes incompetent mortgage advice

by Gill Montia
Which? has been investigating competency among mortgage advisers and has found that many are omitting to check information on clients' abilities to meet repayments. The consumer group sent its researchers to gather advice from banks, estate agents and independent mortgage advisers. Acting as first-time buyers, they visited 24 banks, 13 estate agents and 13 independent mortgage advisers in England and Scotland, between February and ...

---

New mortgage approvals decline 66% year-on-year

by Gill Montia
The British Bankers' Association (BBA) has released figures for mortgage lending in June, showing that the number of new home loans approved by the UK's leading lenders fell 23% in a month. In May, BBA members approved 27,499 new home loans but the figure declined to 21,118 in June, representing a 66.9% fall on the same period of 2007. The annual fall ...

---

Sub-prime lender offers cash-back on mortgage redemptions

by Gill Montia
One time subprime mortgage specialist, Edeus, has taken the unusual step of offering cash-back to selected customers who redeem their mortgages. The lender closed its doors to new business last year and has been struggling to sell its loans to investors in mortgage-backed securities. Much of the debt is in the sub-prime sector and the market for this is virtually dead. The firm ...

---

Mortgage fees rise 20% in a year

by Gill Montia
Research from price comparison website, mform.co.uk, shows that the arrangement fees applied to the most competitive mortgages on the market have increased by an average of 20% during the past 12 months. The average fee paid buy borrowers for a best-buy product has risen from £738.33 in August 2007 to £889.69. For three-year fixed-rate deals the rise is even steeper, with the ...

---

July 22, 2008

FSA crack down on mortgage fraud

by Gill Montia
The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has announced that it is cracking down on mortgage fraud, having already banned 17 brokers in the past 12 months. The regulator says it wants to receive more information from lenders who spot suspect loan applications and will be working to improve intelligence sharing across the industry. Lenders have been asked to report suspect mortgage brokers since 2006 ...

---

Average two-year fixed-rate drops below 7%

by Gill Montia
Moneyfacts.co.uk has announced that the average interest rate on a two-year fixed-rate mortgage has fallen to 6.96%. Market swap rates have soared in recent months, taking rates on this popular type of loan to a ten-year high of 7.08%. However rates on the two-year and other fixed deals are now falling. In the case of the three-year fix, by 0.12% and on the ...

---

Woolwich cuts rates and launches lifetime tracker

by Gill Montia
Woolwich is cutting mortgage interest rates for the second time in two weeks. The lender, which is part of the Barclays group, is reducing the rate on its 10-year fixed-rate deal by 0.32 percentage points, to 5.94%. Rates on three-year and five-year fixes will fall by 0.2% and 0.1% respectively. The move follows rate cuts by a number of lenders in ...

---

July 18, 2008

Halifax cuts mortgage rates

by Gill Montia
Halifax has announced that it is cutting some mortgage rates from 19th July, having already reduced the cost of a range of loans during last week. The bank is lowering rates on its two-year fixed-rate mortgages by 0.1% and on its five-year deals by 0.15%. The move is aimed at keeping the UK's largest mortgage lender competitive, as in the past few days Nationwide, ...

---

June mortgage lending down 32%

by Gill Montia
The Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) has reported that gross mortgage lending declined to an estimated £23.8 billion in June. The figure is 3% down from May of this year and 32% below the June 2007 level. On a quarterly basis, gross lending fell by 1% between the first and second quarters of 2008. While the decrease is small this is a period when gross ...

---

July 17, 2008

Britannia launches five-year fix at 5.99%

by Gill Montia
Britannia Building Society is launching a new five-year fixed-rate mortgage on Friday 18th July. The loan will be available at a rate of 5.99% on loan-to-values (LTVs) of up to 75% and 6.39% on LTVs up to 90%. A £999 arrangement fee applies in both cases. The lender is still offering its existing five-year fixed-rate mortgages, one of which has an arrangement fee ...

---

July 16, 2008

Nationwide cuts mortgage rates again

by Gill Montia
For the second time in a fortnight, Nationwide is cutting mortgage rates. The lender says that new borrowers will benefit from a reduction of up to 0.46% on some of its two, three and five-year fixed-rate deals and its two-year lifetime tracker mortgages. The building society is cutting the rate on a two-year fixed-rate deal from 6.48% to 6.18% on loans with a ...

---

July 15, 2008

CML offers blueprint to kick-start mortgage market

by Gill Montia
The Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) has drawn up a plan that it believes will address the funding problems in the UK mortgage market. A copy of the blueprint, which the CML says could help to significantly reduce the severity of the downturn in the housing market, have been submitted to the Treasury. Members of the Crosby review of housing finance have ...

---

July 14, 2008

Remortgagers opt for longer mortgage terms

by Gill Montia
John Charcol has reported that increasing numbers of homeowners struggling with higher interest payments are opting to extend the terms of their mortgages to reduce monthly repayments. According to research by the mortgage broker, between 10% and 15% of borrowers who have remortgaged in the past two months extended the lifetime of their loans, or switched to interest-only payments. To offer a comparison, monthly repayments on a typical ...

---

Abbey cuts cost of fixed-rate loans

by Gill Montia
Abbey is cutting the cost of its two and three-year fixed-rate mortgages by up to 0.15% this week. From today, rates on a two-year fixed loan start at 6.34% with £999 fee and on a three-year fix from 6.29% (minimum loan to value ratio LTV 75%). The lender has also added a new three-year fix to its range, at 70% LTV. ...

---

July 10, 2008

New mortgage deal round up

by Gill Montia
A number of lenders have launched new mortgage deals this week. Leeds Building Society has introduced a five-year fixed-rate loan at 5.99% and with no higher lending charge. Maximum loan-to-value ratio is 80% and 10% capital repayments are allowed each year without any penalty charge. Interested parties can apply via the lender's branches, online, or by phone. Woolwich has introduced new three-year fixes and has upped ...

---

July 8, 2008

Lenders expect decline in home loan volumes to continue

by Gill Montia
The Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) has reported that completed loans for house purchases increased by 4% in volume from April to May, to 52,700. The total value of mortgages grew by 2% in May, to £7.9 billion, but remained 44% below the figure for May 2007. Meanwhile remortgaging business fell sharply during the month declining to ...

---

Fixed-rate loans continue to rise in cost

by Gill Montia
Latest research from financial website Moneyfacts.co.uk shows that the cost of a fixed-rate mortgage is continuing to rise despite a fall in money market swap rates. Swap rates determine fixed mortgage interest rates and reflect traders' views on the direction that interest rates will take during the period of the fix. While swap rates peaked in the middle of last month and ...

---

July 7, 2008

Negative equity entraps 145,000 homeowners

by Gill Montia
A survey conducted by CACI for the Daily Telegraph indicates that one in eight people who have borrowed money to buy their homes since the beginning of last year could be in negative equity. According to the research, almost 145,000 homeowners now have mortgages that exceed the value of their properties. In addition, CACI is predicting that 360,000 borrowers could be in negative equity ...

---

Nationwide and Abbey reduce mortgage rates

by Gill Montia
Nationwide Building Society is reducing interest rates on some of its fixed-rate and tracker mortgages this week, with rates on its fixed loans for house buyers falling up to 0.07%. A two-year fix is available from 6.58% with a £599 fee or 6.98% with no fee, while rates on the lender's newly-launched two-year tracker start at 5.98% with a £599 fee, or ...

---