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.
31/12/2009 by
December is usually the month when Nationwide’s widely reported seasonally adjusted House Price Index shows the largest upward adjustment from the real figure and this year was no different. Thus a real fall of 0.4% in December is...
Categories: Property market
10/12/2009 by
The main impact of the Pre Budget Report on the housing market will be at the top end, primarily in London & the South East. The 50% bank payroll tax on discretionary bonuses over £25,000 will surely have some impact either on...
Categories: Property market, Personal finance, Regulation, House and home
07/12/2009 by
I watched the repeat of Question Time on BBC Parliament yesterday and two points in relation to the housing market in general and the Lib Dems’ revised proposals for a Mansion tax in particular struck me as being worth commenting...
Categories: Property market, House and home
01/12/2009 by
Yorkshire Building Society has announced it is in “advanced talks” to takeover, sorry, merge with, Chelsea Building Society. This is not yet a done deal and the statement was no doubt rushed out as a result of a leak reported by...
Categories: Buy to let, Mortgages, Regulation, Miscellaneous
09/11/2009 by
Below is my November column for Money Marketing, published last week: ...
Categories: Mortgages, Regulation
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
30/10/2009 by
Nationwide’s “Real” House price Index increased by 0.1% in October, compared to the more widely reported 0.4% seasonally adjusted rise. This is the smallest monthly rise since the market bottomed out in February but nevertheless...
Categories: Property market, Bank of England, Mortgages
26/10/2009 by
The announcement this afternoon that Barclays are acquiring Standard Life Bank is sad news for consumers, not because of anything negative about Barclays but because it means that one of the dwindling number of brands still active...
Categories: Buy to let, Mortgages
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
20/10/2009 by
Mortgage Strategy is reporting a call from Vince Cable for ‘stakeholder’ style mortgages to be introduced. He starts off well by saying: “With such a complex mortgage market already in existence highly prescriptive rules for...
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.