Mortgage lending drops July 20, 2011 Gross mortgage lending fell three per cent on the year in June but was 16 per cent up on the month, the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) said. The CML said gross mortgage lending totalled £12.6bn in June, the highest monthly total in almost a year. It said lending in the first half of this [...]
JP Morgan cheers with profit hike July 14, 2011 INVESTMENT banking giant JP Morgan Chase cheered markets with a $5.4bn (£3.4bn) quarterly profit yesterday, 13 per cent higher than a year ago, as its investment banking arm powered up. Its result, the latest in a run of forecast-beating updates, boosted hopes that other major banks will also show gains as they report quarterly figures [...]
Rents in London now average more than £1,000 per month July 14, 2011 RENTAL costs have soared past £1,000 per month in London, a survey of letting agents revealed this morning. London’s rents were up an average of 6.9 per cent per property in June compared to the same time the previous year, the Buy-to-Let Index from LSL Property Services said. While rent inflation is particularly intense in [...]
First time buyer market may ease July 14, 2011 WITH the Bank of England keeping interest rates at the record low of 0.5 per cent, the outlook should be good for those looking to buy a home. But with renting in London costing 50 per cent more than the rest of the country and banks requiring higher and higher deposits, the picture for those [...]
JPMorgan profit beats forecasts July 14, 2011 JPMorgan Chase & Co posted a higher-than-expected jump in second-quarter profit as it wrote off fewer bad mortgages and credit card loans. The bank managed to make more loans during the quarter than in the first quarter and added staff, signs that bright spots are emerging in a sector long plagued by credit losses and [...]
House market stuck in a rut July 11, 2011 WEAK supply and demand has left the UK housing market in a “stalemate” despite a pick-up in mortgage lending, new data suggests. Demand failed to rise in June while the recent growth in new instructions to market properties ground to a halt, according to the latest survey from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS). [...]
House prices rise in June July 6, 2011 House prices rose 1.2 per cent in June, their biggest month-on-month rise since October, mortgage lender Halifax said. That confounded analysts’ expectations for an unchanged reading and left prices 3.5 per cent lower in the three months to June compared with a year ago. “Low interest rates, an increase in the number of people in [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING July 4, 2011 FINANCIAL TIMES PAULSON ENJOYS $500M LEHMAN BOOST AS VALUE OF BOND RECOVERS Paulson & Co, the hedge fund that made billions from betting on a collapse in mortgage-backed securities during the financial crisis, has made more than $550m from a recovery in the value of bonds it bought in failed investment bank Lehman Brothers. BRUNSWICK [...]
House prices flat in June June 30, 2011 House prices in England and Wales held steady in June, and this trend of broadly static prices is likely to continue for the rest of the year, mortgage lender Nationwide said. Nationwide’s June house price index showed no change on the month, compared to a 0.3 per cent rise in May, and was 1.1 percent [...]
UK consumer confidence slumps again June 29, 2011 SQUEEZED household incomes prompted a sharp drop in consumer confidence in June, while appetite to take on debt remains weak according to separate data released by the Bank of England yesterday. After an uptick in morale from extra bank holidays in April and May, the GfK NOP consumer confidence index slipped back to -25, with [...]