First off our Contractor mortgages expert, the award-winning Tom Matthews, was in the Sunday Times yesterday explaining that if you are a contractor or freelancer there are more mortgages available than you might think. Just because your applicants have a different way of working does not mean that they cannot obtain a loan, so it is worth having a chat with us to review their options.
It was another interesting week of stats for the UK as inflation fell under the Bank of England’s 2% target for the first time since November 2009 and unemployment twirked up to 7.2% after all the recent discussions on a sudden fall.
Perhaps most interesting however, were two items that caught my eye. First were the comments from Bank of England MPC member Martin Weale stating that Base Rate is “likely to rise next spring”. This will not surprise many as there is the small matter of an election on the way, but the fact that we now have a clearer idea can help to focus the mind of the borrower.
Secondly an excellent piece of research from IMLA that shows that cash buyers were behind 4 in 10 purchases in 2013. The proportion of home purchases funded by mortgages fell to 62% last year, which was the lowest level since 2005 when this type of data was first available.
This in itself underlines some of the difficulties facing the Bank of England if they did wish to try to control increasing house prices by constraining mortgages although they feel that “talk of a house price bubble has been greatly exaggerated”.
Meanwhile there have been some rate rises from a few lenders last week and although SWAP rates dipped a little again, with 5 year money again under 2%, fixed rates have increased on 2 year fixes as well as 5 year fixes.
Are lenders trying to claw back some margin? Interesting to see what happens next.