Have Mortgage Rates Peaked?
News that Halifax and Bank of Scotland, part of the HBOS group, have cut their mortgage rates for new customers by 0.3% and 0.45% respectively has been well received by the markets. This comes on the back of a similar move by Northern Rock and rumours of further cuts to come in the sector. The combined moves of late, which have seen the HBOS group reduce rates 3 times in June alone, has prompted many to ask if mortgage rates have peaked and the trend is now down?
There is no doubt that the mortgage market is very much in need of a period of falling rates in order to try and stimulate demand in the battered housing sector, but whether rates have peaked yet is debateable. The rate cuts being announced are for new customers with many older clients still stuck at higher rates for the immediate future and more and more struggling to cover their payments.
There is no doubt that the next few months will see a substantial increase in repossessions which will weigh down on any possible housing market recovery for some time. We are also seeing more and more home owners pushed into the negative equity trap which will see plans to move up the property ladder put on hold or scrapped altogether.
Share this..
Related stories
Airline industry under more pressure
In an amazing development bookmaker Paddy Power has begun to take bets on which airline will be next to fall by the wayside. The well-known bookmaker has slashed the odds on Monarch, a privately owned Swiss airline, from 50/1 to 4/1 making it the favourite to fall by the wayside in the short term. However, the company has denied any financial trouble and criticised Paddy Power for running a book o...
Read MoreAlex Salmond Calls For PFI Money
He has criticised the style of funding, he has always claimed he would never embrace it, but as they say even a week is a long time in politics. That King of spin, Alex Salmond has backed down in a major u-turn for his party and accepted that private finance will be required to fulfil his ambitious plans for Scottish schools, hospitals and roads. So what has changed his mind? Ever since the S...
Read MoreMortgage possession orders up
The number of mortgage possession orders issued in England and Wales rose during the first quarter of this year, official data has shown.In January to March there were 21,931 orders made at county courts, one per cent up from the first three months of 2006.Coming the same day as the government showed a record 30,075 people declared themselves insolvent in the same period, the Department for Consti...
Read MoreRecession Watch : The UK mortgage market
Ever since the UK government realised that the UK banking sector was effectively in freefall we have seen calls for mortgage liquidity to be increased to "spend" our way out of the recession. However, up until the last couple of weeks there had been no sign of increased liquidity in the UK mortgage market and even less instances of competitive mortgage rates and mortgage offers. However, companies...
Read MoreGeorge Osbourne Set To Announce Sweeping Green Policy
George Osbourne, the Conservative Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, will tonight unveil plans to pay each household in the UK for recycling their waste, as oppose to the current Labour government which has used the stick and increased taxes year on year to try and increase recycling. So who is right and who is wrong?
While there has been the expected political squabbling about th...