Mortgage approvals drop as housing market stalls September 23, 2010 The number of mortgages approved by banks for home buyers dropped in August for the third month in a row. Banks approved 31,767 home loans down from 34,219 in July, the British Bankers’ Association (BBA) said. The figures are another indication that the UK property market has stalled. A raft of data has shown that [...]
US house prices at 6-year low September 22, 2010 US HOUSE prices fell 0.5 per cent in July to their lowest level in six years, official figures showed yesterday, heaping further woes on homeowners as the end of government-backed tax credits aimed at first time buyers began to bite. The US government had offered first time buyers a tax credit of $8,000 (£5,106) to [...]
Borrowing at a 10-year low September 20, 2010 MORTGAGE lending in the UK hit a 10-year low in August falling to £11.4bn, down 14 per cent from £13.3bn in July, the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) said yesterday. The figure was also down six per cent from £12.1bn in August 2009 with the CML warning lending levels were likely to remain subdued until [...]
Mortagage lending falls in August September 20, 2010 Gross mortgage lending fell six per cent year-on-year in August to £13.3bn, the Council of Mortgage Lenders has said. That was the lowest August total since 2000 and represented a drop of 14 per cent from July. The figures chimes with other surveys in showing a cooling in the housing market following a sharp recovery [...]
Default risks keep cost of lending high September 19, 2010 AN INCREASE in financial institutions’ perceived riskiness and their need to shore up balance sheets in the wake of the credit crisis has kept the cost of borrowing high despite the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) slashing headline interest rates to historic lows, the Bank of England will say today in its latest quarterly bulletin. Despite [...]
CML: Lending weak in July September 13, 2010 MORTGAGE lending in July continued to be weak in what is often a strong month, according to the latest figures released yesterday from the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML). The CML said mortgage lenders issued 56,000 new mortgages worth £8.4bn in July, up slightly on June’s figure of 52,000 mortgages at £7.7bn and 53,000 mortgages [...]
Mortgages in slim rise September 13, 2010 THE number of mortgages for house buyers increased to 56,000 in July – a rise of seven per cent on the previous month, the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) said. This was also up six per cent up on the same month a year ago. But the group said that despite the seasonal rise, the [...]
Austerity means cheaper mortgages September 9, 2010 SO the Bank of England, entirely unsurprisingly, kept its base rate unchanged yesterday, as advocated by almost all economists. I, together with a tiny number of dissidents, thought rates should go up, to send a signal to the markets that extreme measures were no longer required and that it was time to start readjusting to [...]
Redrow calls for state help on mortgages September 9, 2010 THE head of housebuilder Redrow called on the government to take action over the sickly first-time buyer market in a bid to revive overall sales, after reporting better-than-expected annual results. Steve Morgan, the founder of Redrow who returned in a boardroom coup last year, described state intervention as a “no-brainer” due to low mortgage availability [...]
Regulator block NAB’s $12bn bid for Axa Asia September 9, 2010 Australia’s competition regulator blocked National Australia Bank’s $12bn (£7.8bn) bid for AXA Asia Pacific for a second time, dashing NAB’s efforts to cement its dominance in the world’s fourth-largest wealth management market. The decision clears the decks for Australia’s second-biggest fund manager, AMP, to take another tilt at AXA Asia Pacific after its cash and [...]