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.
25/04/2009 by
Answer. Both have recently announced an increase of about 30% in their fees and both attempted to justify the increase on the basis that after deciding how much they wanted to spend that was the percentage increase needed to...
Categories: Property market, Personal finance, Regulation, House and home
20/04/2009 by
On 25 March I wrote that it was time to fix and swap rates have subsequently bobbed up and down without moving very far. Since then 4 and 5 year swap rates are up a net 0.10%, based on today’s closing rates, with longer term rates...
Categories: Property market, Bank of England, Mortgages, Regulation, Interest rates
18/04/2009 by
Although the Chancellor has indicated that there will be no further major fiscal stimulus in the budget on April 22, he should temporarily take the axe to stamp duty land tax on residential property, a move that would cost...
Categories: Property market, Mortgages, Regulation, House and home
03/04/2009 by
International media reaction to the G-20 summit in London ranged from wary to upbeat but looking at the front page headlines in even Tory papers today Gordon Brown's spin machine can claim some brownie points in the short term....
Categories: Bank of England, Regulation, Miscellaneous
17/03/2009 by
John Charcol has issued the following press release today on the FSA's crackpot idea to limit mortgages to 3 times income, regardless of borrowers' ability to afford more or the level of interest rates: ...
Categories: Property market, Mortgages, Regulation
09/02/2009 by
Cheltenham & Gloucester emailed us late this afternoon to say that their fixed rates are changing tomorrow. They advised that “These changes follow movement in swap rates which have enabled us to pass on reductions on our...
Categories: Mortgages, Regulation, Interest rates
13/12/2008 by
The BBC has today been reporting about Abbey withdrawing borrowing facilities from some customers with an offset mortgage, which Abbey call a flexible mortgage. This follows Abbey sending out letters last month to about 4,000...
Categories: Mortgages, Personal finance, Regulation
12/12/2008 by
Tomorrow’s FT Money Section has an article headed “Borrowers refused best rates,” focusing on good quality clients being turned down for stupid reasons, a problem which is escalating. Brief details of a couple of examples I gave...
Categories: Buy to let, Mortgages, Regulation
09/12/2008 by
It is very rare for a trade body to issue a press release as critical of the government as today’s release from the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML). ...
Categories: Bank of England, Mortgages, Regulation, Interest rates
28/11/2008 by
Nationwide have today announced that from 1 December they will no longer allow any new borrowing by either existing or new customers on their Standard Variable Rate, which they call Base Mortgage Rate (BMR). The only situation in...
Categories: Mortgages, Regulation, House and home, 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.