Mortgage News
Mortgage Mutterings: The week that was 18 – 22 October 2010
This is the Mortgage Solutions weekly talk back page, where we pick the best online comments and letters to the editor on the big stories of the week to give you a flavour of what the industry is really thinking.
You can take another look at the week’s news and we’ll round up the stand-out, most thought-provoking or unmissable comments posted after stories or sent straight through to the editor.
Comment any time on the Mortgage Solutions website and you could feature in next week’s Mortgage Mutterings.
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Hot topic of the week – Has the tough lending climate flattened your optimism? 18 October 2010
Posted online
Your First Home: confidence to build
Sponsored by Halifax Intermediaries
Brokers are generally disenchanted with lending attitudes, especially some banking groups that openly admit that intermediaries are barred from access to their clients.
How selfish is that after all the years of gladly accepting business to swell their coffers from professionals who generally do their utmost to look after their clients. It is rapidly becoming an “institutionalised” market place that undermines free trade and competition.
Barry
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Spending Review 2010: Housing cuts will shake FTB and rental markets 20 October 2010
Posted online
An easier option is to bring back a more regulated self-cert market. It wasn’t the banks who didn’t want self cert, it was down to the FSA’s intervention.
The banks need to relax their criteria and, if it is the FSA that is hindering them (which we all know it is), then something urgently needs to be done to eliminate the hindrance. Why is Tesco having such problems? Why is it taking brokers so long to register with the FSA? Why are the fines so high and why are these fines not passed onto the FOS to reduce the overall fee for the brokers?
Anonymous
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Blog: Why can’t my home be my pension? 20 October 2010
Posted online
If someone has concentrated on property instead of a pension, then spending that asset in one way or another is surely an inevitability of retirement.
Just as a pension fund is ‘spent’ using an annuity, property needs to be disposed of (buy-to-let rental aside) by downsizing or using equity release. The stated downsize of reducing inheritance is par for the course whether pension or property.
David Wright
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Spending Review: Banks ‘appallingly regulated’ under Labour 20 October 2010
Posted online
The light touch regulation of banks was justified by the size of their reserves – so-called cheque book regulation. By contrast, IFAs get it right because they can ill afford to do otherwise. Now the folly of this approach has put the whole of the UK economy at risk. I expect to see a sea change in behaviour by the banks. Is anyone taking bets on this?
Duncan Jones
Comment two
You’re so right Duncan. Osborne has a nerve; a year before the credit crunch, the Tories suggested scrapping all personal mortgage regulation.
I am sure many mortgage advisers will agree that the biggest problem in personal credit is not that too large mortgages have been granted, it is the amount of credit card lending which subsequently makes the mortgages unaffordable. So many credit cards have been granted not on an affordability basis, but on whether the client was paying his existing credit cards, when he was probably using one to pay another.
Des Platt
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FSA: Uproar over self-cert proposals in MMR unwarranted 22 October 2010
Posted online
There are people who cannot prove their incomes due to umpteen reasons, yet have money saved for deposits and cannot get a mortgage. This is slowing down the mortgage market and is affecting the economy. Everyday, we turn back clients who can easily afford mortgages. It will be too late when requirements are changed again. It needs to be done now.
Salam Ansari
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Have a great weekend.
The Mortgage Solutions team