Lloyds is the real driver behind the mortgage boom February 27, 2014 Britain’s housing market is booming, with mortgage lending soaring and prices rising at giddy, pre-crash rates. But not everyone is taking part – of Britain’s biggest four banks, two cut gross new mortgage lending last year, and one barely budged on the year. In fact, the boom in lending is almost all coming from Lloyds. [...]
Here’s why homebuyers weren’t deterred by US storms February 26, 2014 Apparently people in the US still buy houses when it’s well below freezing outside, but today's new home sales numbers don't necessarily mean fair skies from here on in for the housing market. The number of new home buyers in the US shot up 9.6 per cent in January to a five-year high – a [...]
JP Morgan cuts jobs and reduces profit target as top exec quits February 25, 2014 THE BIGGEST bank in America, JP Morgan, warned of job cuts and a reduction in profit for 2014 during an investor conference yesterday. Shares in the company were down 1.72 per cent at market close after the news. Around 8,000 jobs are expected to go at the bank, the majority from its mortgage division where 17,000 [...]
Mortgage payments will jump by billions if rates start to rise February 25, 2014 BRITISH home owners could be forking out an extra £2.2bn on mortgage repayments by the end of next year, according to a major bank’s forecast for the Bank of England’s next interest rate hike. In an adverse but realistic scenario, the projection suggests that repayments could rise by as much as £5bn by 2015, raising [...]
Persimmon profits more than double on booming demand February 25, 2014 Another house builder riding the wave of surging demand. Following bumper results from Bovis yesterday, Persimmon has said this morning that its profit before tax more than doubled in 2013. The 54.5 per cent increase to £337.1m came about as the group “responded quickly” to growing customer demand, outperforming its original long term plan. Chairman Nicolas [...]
Soaring number of low deposit mortgage deals February 24, 2014 NEW FIGURES released this morning suggest that the number of products for the highest loan-to-value (LTV) mortgages has tripled since the surprise launch of the second phase of Help to Buy in October. The number of products available for buyers with only a five per cent deposit has soared from 43 to 132 in less [...]
January’s drop in US housing sales is nothing to worry about February 21, 2014 US home sales dropped 5.1 per cent to 4.62m in January. Forecasts had been for a fall, although to a more encouraging 4.68m, following December’s 4.87m. Annualised, they fell to a 462,000 rate, the National Association of Realtors said. Weakness in housing activity has been put down, almost wholly, to the unseasonably bad weather the [...]
Nationwide seizes market share February 20, 2014 THE NATIONWIDE is grabbing more current account and mortgage customers from the big four banks, the building society revealed yesterday. The growth pushed up profits as the lender’s interest margins improved. Nationwide made £21.6bn of mortgage loans in the nine months to December, up 34 per cent on the year. The growth is faster than that in [...]
What you need to know before the US open February 20, 2014 US stock index futures suggest markets will open lower, as investors look again towards ongoing emerging market turmoil. The continuing and severe violence in Ukraine at the moment has seen the country’s hryvnia plummet to five-year lows, and state debt insurance rising to 2009 highs. Weaker growth from China – the Markit/HSBC purchasing managers’ index [...]
January mortgage approvals up over a third from a year ago February 20, 2014 More fuel to stoke house price fear fires this morning, with added evidence that market activity started 2014 very much on the front foot. Mortgage approvals hit their highest level in six years in the final quarter of 2013, averaging 70,000. And in January, they were up 33 per cent year-on-year. According to figures from [...]