Blog

Issues with free legals have come to the fore once again as a number of brokers have expressed dissatisfaction with processes involved in remortgage deals that come with the so-called benefit.

Manchester Money managing director Chris Barker says that when dealing with free legals, he often can’t get through to the solicitors who have been assigned to his cases when he needs to – and that when he does get through, problems such as documents not having been sent out are abundant.

“Clients are moving on to SVRs when they shouldn’t have to,” he says. “I worry that it is affecting our reputation.”

Read More

The inflation rate coming it at 1.8 per cent, a two-year low, has fuelled talk in some quarters of the Bank of England potentially reversing its recent direction and cutting interest rates.

Adding fuel to this is the fact that, despite the Monetary Policy Committee minutes that covered the last interest rate decision saying that policy would be tightened “at a gradual pace and to a limited extent,” recent remarks from MPC member Gertjan Vlieghe suggest the bank being open to a different direction.

In a speech given today at the Resolution Foundation, Vlieghe talks of how under the assumption that economist trends continue as they are today, upping the base rate by 0.25 per cent a year “seems a reasonable central case.”

Read More

Monetary Policy Committee member, Gertjan Vlieghe, predicts that the Committee would choose to ease monetary policy in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

In a speech made today, Vlieghe said his opinion about the future path of Bank Rate has changed from last year, when he thought one to two quarter point hikes per year in Bank Rate “was the most likely central case”.

Read More

Latest figures from e.surv show that the number of small deposit borrowers grew in January.

The proportion of mortgage approvals in the first month of 2019 was 27.1 per cent versus the 25.2 per cent figure seen in December.

Overall, mortgage borrowing grew to 66,350 approvals, a 4 per cent rise on a monthly basis.

Read More

Competition in the first-time buyer market has driven a fall in the average two-year fixed rate, according to Moneyfacts.

Data collected by the firm shows the overall average two-year fixed rate mortgage has fallen 0.04 per cent, from 2.53 per cent in August 2018 to 2.49 per cent this month.

In the 95 per cent LTV category, the average two-year fixed rate has decreased from 3.95 per cent to 3.41 per cent over the same time frame.

Read More

The Bank of England’s monetary policy committee has voted unanimously to keep the base rate at 0.75 per cent.

The rate has stayed at this level since it was raised from 0.50 per cent in early August last year.

The meeting minutes show that the committee believes that the softer growth seen both domestically and internationally is “likely to prove only temporary,” and that CPI inflation is expected to settle a “little above 2 per cent in the medium term”. Currently it sits at 2.1 per cent.

Read More

House prices grew by just 0.8 per cent in the 12 months leading to January, latest data from Halifax shows.

This leaves the average UK house price at £223,691.

On a monthly basis, prices dropped 2.9 per cent, which Halifax says is the second time in three years there has been a price fall at the start of the year.

Read More

Nationwide’s newest house price index shows that annual house price growth slowed to 0.1 per cent in January, its weakest rate since February 2013.

On a monthly basis, house prices grew 0.3 per cent when seasonally adjusted, a turnaround on December, when monthly prices dropped by 0.7 per cent.

This means that the average UK house price now stands at £211,96, whereas in December this figure came to £212,281.

Read More

Data from the Bank of England shows that the “broadly stable” activity seen since 2016 continued into the final month of 2018, resulting in households borrowing £4.1bn against their properties.

This is up from November’s figure of £3.6bn and just above the six-month average of £3.9bn.

The data also shows that 63,793 house purchases were approved in December, worth a combined value of £11.9bn, down slightly from November’s 63,952 at £12bn.

Read More

Falling London house prices are masking resilience elsewhere in the UK, according to the latest UK House Price Index from the ONS.

Its data shows that average house prices in the UK increased by 2.8% in the year to November 2018, up slightly from 2.7% in October 2018.

London house prices saw the lowest annual growth with a fall of 0.7% over the year to November 2018, and have now seen declining growth each month since July 2018.

Read More