Help to Buy isn’t the answer to the Conservative predicament September 29, 2013 WITH just 20 months to go before the general election, the Tories need to get their skates on. While many London-centric, private sector employed middle class professionals see Ed Miliband as an unelectable joke, the rest of the country disagrees. YouGov puts Labour 11 points ahead, suggesting a 100 seat majority for Miliband’s party, partly [...]
Borrowers set for small cut in interest rates September 29, 2013 MORTGAGE borrowers who use the government’s new guarantee scheme could see interest rates fall by up to one percentage point, City A.M. understands. Banks lending under the scheme will have to pay the government a fee for each mortgage given out, a cost that will be passed on to borrowers. But the fee will only [...]
Osborne could finally be seeing sense over Help to Buy September 27, 2013 Analysts have welcomed reports that Osborne's Help to Buy mortgage backing scheme could be watered down, as data this morning shows house prices hitting a 2008 high. It was reported in City A.M. today that the programme's upper limit – providing mortgage support for homes worth as much as £600,000 could be reduced on recommendation [...]
Jamie Dimon’s $11bn day out September 26, 2013 JP Morgan boss heads to Washington for settlement talks JP MORGAN boss Jamie Dimon met Justice officials in Washington DC yesterday, travelling down from New York to hammer out the final details of the bank’s bill to settle mortgage investigations. The lender is facing the biggest ever fine levied on a bank, with officials thought [...]
Regulator fines Clydesdale for botched mortgages September 26, 2013 Clydesdale Bank has been fined £8.9 million for failing to treat its mortgage customers fairly. The Financial conduct Authority (FCA) issued the fine after customers were not informed clearly their rights following the bank's miscalculation of repayments on over 42,500 mortgages. In April 2009, Clydesdale discovered an error in its repayment calculation method for customers [...]
RBS pins hopes of turnaround to profits on rising interest rates September 24, 2013 RISING interest rates would quickly make RBS billions of pounds, the bank’s finance chief revealed yesterday, raising hopes that the economic recovery will boost the taxpayer-backed lender. If rates are hiked one percentage point, incomes would rise £450m in the first year, £640m in the second and £860m in the third. And a gradual rise of [...]
New York Report: Stocks fall for a fourth straight session in US September 24, 2013 THE DOW and S&P 500 ended lower yesterday, extending their recent slide to a fourth session as worries over a possible US government shutdown added to investor caution. Although uncertainty remains over the Federal Reserve’s intentions to scale back its stimulus since its decision last week to leave its current programme unchanged, some of the [...]
Consumer confidence and personal deposits up as business borrowing increases September 24, 2013 (BBA) Personal deposits have risen by almost five per cent over the year to August, says the BBA. (Release) BBA statistics director, David Dooks said: These figures suggest that consumer confidence is growing. For the first time in four years, annual growth in household borrowing on credit cards and personal loans has turned positive and [...]
Buy-to-let specialist Paragon raises £273m in mortgage sale September 23, 2013 SPECIALIST lender Paragon completed a securitisation transaction yesterday, raising funds in the market to finance more lending, the group announced. Special purpose vehicle Paragon Mortgages 18 was made up of three tranches of assets, and came in at a total of £273m. The vast majority of the deal was made up of triple-A rated notes [...]
Bank of America prepares for court case over home loan row September 23, 2013 BANK of America will this week face claims Countrywide, which it owns, defrauded government mortgage underwriters from 2007. It is alleged Countrywide approved deficient home loans in a process called “Hustle”, before selling those loans on to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. When the loans defaulted, those state-backed entities lost more than $1bn (£623m), with [...]