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.
19/10/2009 by
The FSA’s Mortgage Market Review (MMR) was published today and although you are not at risk of getting autism from this MMR there will be a significant amount of consumer detriment if the report’s proposals to ban self...
Categories: Property market, Mortgages, Regulation, House and home
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
25/09/2009 by
2 years ago few people had heard of Libor, the London Interbank Offered Rate, let alone knew what it was. Most people still won’t be able to define Libor but as a result of the credit crunch many people will at least be familiar...
Categories: Property market, Bank of England, Mortgages, Regulation, Interest rates
11/08/2009 by
As promised in my previous post I will now comment on the second part of the Treasury Select Committee’s brief, i.e. access to mortgage finance, in its report entitled “Mortgage Arrears and Access to Mortgage Finance” it published...
Categories: Property market, Mortgages, Regulation, House and home
08/08/2009 by
The Treasury Select Committee’s report on “Mortgage Arrears and Access to Mortgage Finance,” published today, pulls no punches. Furthermore the FSA is just as much in the firing line as lenders. I will comment in this post on the...
Categories: Mortgages, Personal finance, Regulation, House and home
21/07/2009 by
Following yesterday’s post a senior executive from Nationwide has called me to point out that the reason for offering the 1 year fix as an additional product transfer option to existing customers who are not moving is to give...
Categories: Mortgages, Regulation, Interest rates
07/07/2009 by
This morning the Treasury Select Committee took evidence on "Mortgage arrears and access to mortgage finance" from, among others, Jon Pain, FSA Managing Director of Retail Markets. He told the committee the market for specialist...
Categories: Buy to let, Mortgages, Regulation
02/06/2009 by
The campaign by The Association of Independent Financial Advisers (AIFA) and the Association of Mortgage Advisers (AMI) against the swingeing increase in regulatory fees originally proposed by FSA on its members was a major factor...
Categories: Regulation
14/05/2009 by
At Tuesday’s FSA Conference Managing Director Jon Pain said that a lot of self certification mortgages lent by specialist lenders has led to large numbers of arrears and frauds. If the FSA failed to recognise “large numbers of …...
Categories: Mortgages, Regulation
13/05/2009 by
At the FSA Conference yesterday Lord Turner said "so should the FSA end up recommending limits to LTV or LTI – the headline issue on which the debate about the future of the mortgage market sometimes focuses? I do not at present...
Categories: Mortgages, Regulation
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.