Ray Boulger's Blog
Ray Boulger is widely renowned as the guru of the mortgage industry and expert on the housing market. Ray is constantly called upon by the media to provide informed comment on all areas of the market, and is a regular on the BBC, Sky and ITV.
Last year, Ray was voted guru of the year at the Headlinemoney awards by all of the nation’s money and property journalists. As such, we thought it was high time that you had direct access to him. Ray’s blog will be updated most days so the knowledge just keeps on coming.
27/05/2010 by
Lloyds Banking Group has just announced that from 1 June Lloyds TSB, Lloyds TSB Scotland and Cheltenham & Gloucester will abandon their current SVR structure, i.e. a guaranteed lifetime cap at Bank Rate + 2%, and instead all new...
Categories: Bank of England, Mortgages, Interest rates
21/04/2010 by
Following yesterday's publication of the disappointing March inflation figures, with year on year CPI up from 3% to 3.4%, and RPI up to 4.4%, today the MPC April meeting minutes and the latest unemployment figures were published....
Categories: Bank of England, Mortgages, Interest rates
25/01/2010 by
Bank of China (UK) has an advert on p.9 of Metro today promoting its Bank Rate + 2.3% lifetime tracker, available up to 75% LTV. If one assesses competitiveness purely on rate and ignores the criteria this rate is market leading...
Categories: Bank of England, Mortgages, Regulation, Interest rates
22/01/2010 by
To promote lower rates from today on a third of its 2 year fixes (those with a maximum LTV of 80%) Santander has put out a press release headlined “Demand for tracker deals plummets as homeowners look to make fixed rate hay while...
Categories: Mortgages, House and home, Interest rates
14/01/2010 by
Rasmussen (One of the top USA polling companies) yesterday released its latest findings on what US consumers think about their housing market and it is not positive news. ...
Categories: Property market, Bank of England, House and home, Interest rates
05/11/2009 by
With today’s Bank Rate decision a forgone conclusion, the only question we had to wait until midday to get the answer to was whether the MPC would extend the Quantitative Easing (QE) programme and, if so, by how much. The...
Categories: Bank of England, Mortgages, Interest rates
21/10/2009 by
Following on from my blog post on Monday on the MMR I note that less than 24 hours after post the FSA have amended the figure I queried for the increase in property prices over the 10 years to the onset of the credit crunch from...
Categories: Buy to let, Mortgages, Personal finance, Regulation, Interest rates, HIPs
09/10/2009 by
Nationwide’s “Real” House price Index increased by 0.9% in September, almost the same as August’s 1.0% rise. The seasonally adjusted figure for September was very similar at + 0.9%, leaving the cumulative difference between these...
Categories: Property market, Bank of England, Mortgages, Interest rates
06/10/2009 by
In the latest blow to the Equity Release market Northern Rock has announced its withdrawal from that market, following on closely from the recent withdrawals of Coventry and Saffron. Northern Rock was one of the first lenders to...
Categories: Bank of England, Mortgages, Personal finance, Regulation, House and home, Interest rates
05/10/2009 by
Following on quickly from the significant improvement (reported in the previous blog post) to Woolwich’s lifetime tracker rate Northern Rock are also getting in on the act with several good improvements to its product range from...
Categories: Buy to let, Mortgages, Interest rates
The blog postings on this site solely reflect the personal views of the authors and do not neccessarily represent the views, positions, strategies or opinions of Charcol Limited. All comments are made in good faith, and neither Charcol Limited nor Ray Boulger will accept liability for them.