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Pre-Budget Report 2009 for first time buyers

admin — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 15:40:15 +0000

The Chancellor, Alistair Darling is accused of using the recovery of recent house prices as an excuse to help the first-time buyers and not support the housing market. While he has not announced an extension to the stamp duty holiday on properties worth less than £175,000, but tries to earn extra revenue from a forecast revival in the housing market. As a result, the tax will once again be levied on all homes worth more than £125,000 from January 1.

Mortgages available to first-time buyers

admin — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 15:34:00 +0000

There are currently 101 different mortgages available to people looking to borrow 90pc of their home’s value, down from 122 at the beginning of the year and 903 in July 2007, before the credit crunch struck.

But the number of home loans aimed at people with a 40pc deposit has soared during the same period, rising from just 17 in July 2007 to 251 in January this year and 320 now.

Financial information group moneyfacts.co.uk said the fall in availability of mortgages with a 90pc loan to value ratio (LTV) showed that first-time buyers were continuing to be ignored by lenders as they cherry-picked lower-risk customers.

Banks and building societies are also failing to pass on falls in their own funding costs to people borrowing a high proportion of their home’s value.

The cost of the average two-year fixed-rate mortgage for someone with a 10pc deposit has fallen by only 0.12 of a percentage point to 6.12pc since September 2007, despite the Bank of England base rate dropping from 5.75pc to a record low of just 0.5pc during the same period.

The margins that lenders charge on these products have also soared during the same period, from just 0.02 of a percentage point above two-year swap rates, on which the deals are partially based, in September 2007 to 1.34 percentage points a year ago, and a massive 4.25 percentage points now.

From - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/financ

2009 June London Property Market

admin — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:02:43 +0000

Regional and national data continued to show declining sales rates and falling prices until April 2009 and there was little positive media coverage on the market until May, when reports of “green shoots” in the London market started to appear in the press. It has often been the case historically that London in general, and central London in particular, is ahead of the wider regional and national markets in terms of market and pricing trends.

Against a backcloth of deepening recession, company failure and growing unemployment, The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee made successive cuts of 0.5% points at its meetings on 8th January, 5th February and 5th March 2009. This took the Official Bank Rate from 2% at the end of 2008 to just 0.5% in March 2009, the lowest rate since records began in 1694. This had a significant impact on reducing the monthly repayments of mortgage holders with tracker mortgages, but with banks still reluctant to lend, it had little impact on the all important first-time buyers.

In Midtown, City and Docklands the resurgence in the market has been underpinned by buyers with significant equity stakes and outright cash buyers. The reduction in the Bank Rate was of only marginal significance to this group of purchasers. On the other hand the reduction in the Bank Rate to 0.5% by early March had a positive effect on general market confidence in Midtown, City and Docklands.