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.
05/05/2009 by
3 months Libor continues to drift gently lower and for the first time ever Dollar 3 month Libor fell below 1% today. The Dollar rate is now 0.99% and the Sterling rate 1.44%. In a testimony to Congress today Ben Bernanke said...
Categories: Mortgages, Interest rates
29/04/2009 by
Abbey announced its results (unaudited) for the first quarter of 2009 today and these confirmed a further increase in the bank’s (now also including Alliance & Leicester) market share of gross lending, pushing the figure back up...
Categories: Mortgages, Interest rates
28/04/2009 by
I am not impressed with Halifax’s new 90% maximum LTV First Time Buyer (FTB) mortgage available from tomorrow, although it is an improvement on their current offering, which is 7.49% fixed to 31/7/14 with a £999 fee and no...
Categories: Property market, Mortgages, Interest rates
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
08/04/2009 by
HSBC has today announced that from next Tuesday it will be offering a couple of 2 year fixed rates and a lifetime tracker up to 90% LTV for purchasers only. The 2 year fixed rate options are 4.99% with a £1,499 booking fee or...
Categories: Property market, Bank of England, Mortgages, House and home, Interest rates
04/04/2009 by
A potentially very serious issue emerged this week following comments from a couple of Government Ministers: ...
Categories: Property market, Mortgages, Miscellaneous, Interest rates
26/03/2009 by
Following the U.S. government’s plan push mortgage rates lower by increasing their purchases of mortgage backed securities as well as Treasury Bonds the traditional 30 year fixed mortgage rate fell today to 4.85%, the lowest on...
Categories: Property market, Mortgages, House and home, Interest rates
25/03/2009 by
Woolwich are reducing the rates on some of their mortgages tomorrow, with their best fixed rate being a 4 year fix for LTVs up to 60% at 3.99%. This is the market leading 4 year fixed rate, although it is only available for...
Categories: Bank of England, Mortgages, Interest rates
24/03/2009 by
On an annual basis the February CPI index, announced this morning, increased from 3% to 3.2% and the RPI fell by just 0.1% to zero. These figures came as a big shock to the market as UK economists had all forecast CPI would fall...
Categories: Bank of England, Mortgages, Interest rates
11/02/2009 by
We have seen mixed movements on fixed rate mortgages this month with some lenders, e.g. Cheltenham & Gloucester (on 5-10 year fixes), Coventry and Halifax, increasing some rates and others, including Chelsea, Cheltenham &...
Categories: Bank of England, 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.