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.
21/07/2009 by
The FT is reporting that Land Securities is in the process of issuing £360m of Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities (CMBS) with a maximum term of 18 years. The security is a single prime office building in Queen Anne’s Gate,...
Categories: Property market, Mortgages
21/07/2009 by
As I commented on 15 July economists were expecting Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to show how the Fed will exit the biggest monetary expansion in history in his half yearly report to the House Financial Services Committee...
Categories: Bank of England, Interest rates
21/07/2009 by
I wouldn’t normally comment on each of the new products in a lender’s range but as my previous blogs on Nationwide’s new 1 and 4 year fixes have generated significant interest today, now that I have full details of its new 3 year...
Categories: Mortgages, Interest rates
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
20/07/2009 by
On Wednesday Nationwide are launching a 1 year fixed rate at 3.59% available ONLY to existing customers, i.e. those on its low 2.5% SVR and those about to come to the end of a deal. This is clever marketing but any temptation to...
Categories: Bank of England, Mortgages, Interest rates
15/07/2009 by
June saw the cost of fixed rate mortgages rocket, with many lenders increasing their 5 year fixes by around 1%, despite swap rates peaking as long ago as 11 June. The Council of Mortgage Lenders yesterday defended lenders’...
Categories: Mortgages, Interest rates
14/07/2009 by
The Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) has today put out a press release expressing its concern that some recent coverage of fixed rate mortgage pricing fails to reflect the complex array of influences on lenders' pricing...
Categories: Bank of England, Mortgages, 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
04/07/2009 by
The Bank of England announced yesterday that Housing Equity Withdrawal in the first quarter of 2009 was -£8.1bn. This figure has now been negative for 4 quarters, rising each quarter, although the figure for the first quarter of...
Categories: Property market, Mortgages, Personal finance, Interest rates
03/07/2009 by
The Nationwide House Price Index – The Real Figures v the Seasonally Adjusted Ones | |||||
Month | Average price (£) | Real Change | Seasonally Adjusted Change | Difference | |
2008 | Jan | 180,473 | - 0.9% | - 0.6% | + 0.3% |
| Feb | 179,358 | - 0.6% | - 0.9% | - 0.3% |
| Mar | 179,110 | - 0.1% | -... | |
Categories: Property market, 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.